What time am I entitled to conclude?
Private Deputies' Business. - Milk Prices—Motion (Resumed).
Debate resumed on the following motion:—
That Dáil Éireann is of opinion that, having regard to existing costs of production, the prices paid to the producer for milk supplied to creameries and also for milk sold for human consumption are inadequate and ought to be increased so as to bring about an expansion of the dairying industry and consequently an increase in the cattle population and an improvement in the supplies of milk and butter available to the consumer.—Deputies P. O'Reilly and Cogan).
It is recognised that the mover of the motion gets 20 minutes to conclude.
As I understood Deputy O'Reilly's motion, it is in substance that he desires the Dáil to record its view that the dairy industry should be conducted on a basis calculated to provide adequate remuneration for the farmers who engage in it. If that be the sense of his motion, I will accept it. If, however, his motion is to be interpreted literally to mean that the price of milk at present payable—1/2 for summer milk and 1/4 for winter milk—should at once be increased——
That is what the motion says.
If that is its interpretation, then I oppose the motion. I think the House, on reflection, will realise that at the present time, in order to maintain the domestic price for butter, the Treasury is providing a sum of £3,000,000 per annum but we are now on the threshold of a period in which, having reached the maximum point of consumption, taking the country as a whole, increased production will produce butter surplus to our own capacity to consume and we will have to ask ourselves: Are we prepared to pay the people of other countries 70/- per cwt. to eat our butter?
I have had occasion to direct the attention of the House to the gratifying increase in the number of milch cows, in the number of heifers in calf, in the number of gallons of milk delivered to our creameries and in the number of cwts. of butter produced by our creameries.
Deputy O'Reilly, in commending this resolution to the House, said that he felt constrained to rest on the facts of which he had personal knowledge and they were the statistics relevant to the Killeshandra Creamery. He recorded faithfully that there was an increase in the total milk supply reaching that creamery, but surmised that that was in large part due to the diversion of milk in that area from farmers' butter to the creamery and added that the average milk yield, measuring yield by the amount of milk delivered to the creamery, ignoring whatever was consumed in the home, was in the order of 265 gallons per cow.
We might as well face the fact at once that we cannot build a successful creamery industry in this country on the basis of a 265-gallon cow. Neither I nor any other Minister for Agriculture in the world can pretend to dairy farmers that there is any prospect of remunerative employment for them in producing butter for sale in the world market from 265-gallon cows. Therefore, I do not feel that I can materially contribute to the useful examination of this problem by pursuing the comparisons which Deputy O'Reilly proceeded to make between the cost of producing milk in County Cavan from 265-gallon cows and the cost of producing milk in Grangegorman Mental Hospital where labour costs 7d. a gallon, health maintenance 2.34d. per gallon, miscellaneous expenses 6.4d. per gallon and where it costs 1/8.37d. per gallon to feed each cow.
If we are talking about milk which is fated to be sold to-day at 1/2 per gallon in summer and 1/4 in winter, it seems to me to be a profitless occupation to dwell on a cost of production which stipulates that feeding a cow, before you do anything else, costs 6d. per gallon more than you can hope to receive for the milk. I would prefer to turn to a more realistic picture of dairy farming in rural Ireland and I quote from the Nenagh Guardian of the 11th February, 1950. The supervisor of the Nenagh and District Cow Testing Association was making his annual report and he commented on the fact that the cows in the society showed a satisfactory increase in their yield which he attributed largely to the superior fertilisation of the pastures and the growing practice of feeding ensilage to the cattle in the winter. He presented a return of the ten best cows in the area and gave the milk yield, the butter fat content and the actual money received by the cow's owner from the creamery in respect of the milk delivered from that cow.
Number one produced a cheque of £65 16s. 4d. for milk delivered to the creamery and there was a calf which sold for somewhere between £5 and £10. Frankly, I am not in a position to tell whether in arriving at that figure regard was had to the value of the separated milk returned, but I think it was valued at 80 per cent. of the volume of the whole milk delivered, valuing the skim milk at 2d. per gallon which, to say the least, is a conservative valuation. I would put it at something nearer 3d. or 3¼d. The second cow yielded its owner £64 14s. 11d.; the third, £64 12s. 10d., and the rest, £64 8s. 9d., £62 7s. 7d., £62 3s. 0d., £61 15s. 0d. £61 12s. 1d., £58 2s. 6d., £56 1s. 4d. and £62 3s. 6d., and in each case there was a calf which was worth anything from £5 to £10.
I want the House to understand most clearly that those were the ten best cows in a cow-testing society and it would be utterly mistaken to imagine that those figures are anything like a representative average. They are the result of skilful farmers giving their best attention to a highly specialised job and producing what are unquestionably exceptionally magnificent results, but they are the results of ordinary dairy farmers who do not go in for pedigree stock, artificial feeding or any exceptional procedure other than that which is readily available to any farmer in Ireland whose land will grow grass and on whose land there is room for a pit in which to store silage for the winter maintenance of his cows in health during the period of their calves' gestation. I do not pretend that I believe for one moment that figures like those are a practical possibility for the bulk of the dairy farmers of the country, but I do say that 400 gallons in a lactation is the lowest level at which a farmer can reasonably expect to participate profitably in the creamery industry. We should resolutely aim at, nor be content until we achieve, an over-all average of between 500 and 600 gallons.
In comparison with the figures I have read out such an average may seem to be a relatively modest aim, but I can assure the House that if we could realise an over-all average of between 500 and 600 gallons we would have no reason to blush in the presence of any dairy industry in the world and we would have every reason confidently to look forward to a solvent and prosperous industry.
I know that the view which it is undoubtedly my duty to communicate to the House now may not correspond with the popular tenet of the time, but I believe that it is the duty of any public servant to speak the truth when the truth is relevant and vital and to take the consequences.
The dairy industry in this country is the foundation on which the whole system of mixed farming which we operate is ultimately built. I think it is wholly illusory to attach primary importance to the ability by pressure exercised by a group to force from the Government or the community a price above what is truly economic. What I consider to be vital to the dairy industry is what it has never had to date, and that is the assurance that for the economic life of a cow the farmer will know, not the price that he will get for every gallon of milk, but the price below which a gallon of milk can never fall. Mind you, there is a great distinction between a minimum price and a fixed price. I want to banish out of the language of the dairy industry the word "surplus". I want to be able to say to the dairy farmers: "From this day forward there is not such a word as ‘surplus'. Your job as owners of your land is to produce from that land the last ounce that skill and industry can extract, while leaving your land in autumn a little better than you found it in the spring, with the certainty that, however great a measure of success attends your effort and that of your neighbour, the price you obtain for your product can never fall below an ascertained level."
In other words, you want a guaranteed price?
"A guaranteed minimum price, but with the assurance that, should circumstances change and you are able to convert your product into some more remunerative commodity, or should world price levels rise, no one will be happier to see the dairy farmers or any part of them enjoy that rise. But, whatever way the cat jumps, you will never know again the desperation of having pledged your credit to buy cows and, long before their economic life was spent, having to face the horror of selling them to the canneries because the milk they produced was not sufficient to pay the interest on your debt."
I have often pointed out to Deputies in this House that we cannot subsidise the land out of the land. In industrial countries the national income derived from industrial occupations may provide a surplus out of which the land and its output may be subsidised, but in Ireland everybody in the last analysis gets his living from the land and, therefore, if you charge the Exchequer with heavy subsidies for agricultural produce you are, in fact, taking money out of the farmer's right-hand pocket in order to compel him to doff his hat and take back his own money to put it into his left-hand pocket.
I believe that if I could get the creamery industry to-day to see their true interest as I see it, I could secure for our dairy farmers an assurance that for five years from the 1st of April next the price of milk in this country, delivered to creameries, need never fall below 1/- a gallon and, contemporaneously with that assurance, it would be possible for me to decontrol the rationing of butter and to say to the farmers: "Eliminate the word ‘surplus' from your vocabulary. The more you produce the better you serve the interests of yourselves and your families and the better you serve the interests of the State as a whole."
I doubt if the opportunity to do that will ever occur again. I believe if we could do it now and see the immensely beneficial consequences to the whole country, succeeding generations would remember us favourably for having had the wisdom to embark on that enterprise. But I do not conceal from the House—it has a right to know— that I am very conscious of the fact that it is terribly difficult to carry conviction to everybody's mind that the wise thing is to take the long view, that it is wise to forgo the proximate advantage for the assurance of longtime security and freedom profitably to make one's best endeavour.
There is no future for any branch of industry, agricultural or otherwise, in this country, which works for ever under the shadow of that tragic word "surplus". Tell any body of farmers to beware lest by increasing their production they bring disaster on themselves and you enter on that sterile spiral of diminishing returns. Reverse the process, fix your eye upon the far horizon and say: "Here is the opportunity to earn, not wealth but comfort," and every man whose industry and skill and enthusiasm are such as that of those the record of whose cows I just read out, can purchase for himself even wealth by exceptional endeavour.
Think of what it would mean in this country now if we had it to tell to every farmer in Ireland: "The word ‘surplus' has no meaning any more; double, treble and quadruple your production you can sell it all; use the byproducts for the multiplication of the pig population of this country, all of which can be profitably sold; double, treble and quadruple the number of our live stock; the more we ship the safer we make the market where profit is to be earned; treble, quadruple and double again every article the land of this country is capable of producing, and, remember, that from the soil of this country we can produce all the raw materials, without exception now, for every branch of the live-stock and live-stock products industry."
There was a time when that general statement had to be qualified by the recollection that the protein element for animal diet might not be adequately catered for without the importation of equatorial produce, such as oil cakes, ground nut meal or some commodity of that kind, but, with our capacity now to manufacture in our own silage pit, or silo, good grass silage, we have, from our own soil, a protein feed superior to anything that money can buy from any corner of the earth: with oats, barley, potatoes and grass this country can produce meat, milk, butter, fowl, eggs, pigs and bacon and, in a hungry world, a nation so equipped can command whatever it may wish or desire.
What we want is an increase in the purchasing power of the consuming public.
How better shall we increase the consuming power of our people than by increasing the total national income of the country, the climate of which, please God, will never be long favourable to racketeers or exploiters or those who claim more than their fair share of the total wealth of our people? If we suffer the growing national income to become the bed of luxury for racketeers and exploiters we have no one but ourselves to blame.
My interest in this is because I see in it a chance to finish the work of making the people who live upon the land independent, capable of earning a good living for themselves and for their families and beholden to no man, foreign or domestic, and free to do on their own holdings whatever they, in their absolute discretion, may think best, in the knowledge that out of that growing income from a fertile land, with an industrious people living on it, we shall derive an income for the nation as a whole not sufficient to buy riches for anybody but sufficient to finance the provision of what used to be known as amenities, but which are now recognised to be the indispensable requirements of a happy people, in public service, in social service and in wage rates for those who do not know the blessing of having property of their own.
Does not the Minister think that he is now far away from the price of milk?
All this I see in the price of milk, but, if my vision in this matter has exceeded the scope of order, let me most gladly say that I constrict the wide horizon of my vision instanter. The motion is, I understand, as interpreted by the mover, that we ought to raise the price of milk. We can. That is the answer, but we have got to find a market on which to sell the resulting butter, and there is no one abroad prepared to pay us a price which will enable us to raise the actual price of milk unless we are prepared to pay them to take our butter away. But, if I might interpret the Deputy's motion as meaning that he expresses the hope that the reward of the dairy farmer for his labour will be enhanced, that I cheerfully accept and not in any vague or uncertain atmosphere, but in the atmosphere of a proposal which, given the requisite support, I think I could carry now and which would entitle me to say to every dairy farmer in Ireland: “For five years hence in any case the sky is the limit.”
Can the Minister do anything about reducing the price to the Dublin consumer?
The Deputy will be surprised at what I might be able to do with his and his colleagues' general support.
The Minister has that at the moment.
I hold out no vista of riches and no promise of plutocratic luxury, but I long for the authority to give our people the security, the prosperity and the immense potentialities that are there to be exploited could we but look ahead instead of studying only to-morrow. I wonder is Deputy O'Reilly still capable of dreaming dreams with me, or are his feet so firmly fixed on mother earth that he can think of nothing but the Killeshandra cow? Perhaps he will say to me that, if he dwells unduly on the Killeshandra cow, my Utopian bovine is equally remote from average experience. If both of us came half way from Killeshandra and Utopia and met in the middle of the road, we might start together on a great adventure. I do not so far despair of the power of words as to give up the hope that I shall have such an agreeable companion. I am very apprehensive that, if he will not come, we cannot go at all. Hope springs eternal in the human breast and, in the light of that, I hope he will accompany me.
I regret I had not the pleasure of hearing the Minister's entire speech, but with what I heard I am in a great measure in agreement. Everybody realises that the income of the farmer is low. I gave a figure of £3 4s. 0d. per week as being the average income in the agricultural industry. Everybody in this House, I think, will agree that it is desirable to raise that standard. It is desirable from every point of view, not alone from the farmers' and farm workers' viewpoint but even from the viewpoint of the overcrowded people of this city upon whose toes the rural population are tramping, because every day the best of our people are drifting into this city.
This motion has not been put down from any narrow or short-term viewpoint. The fact that it was put down over 18 months ago and is still relevant to the present conditions shows that we were looking a fair distance ahead. It is fundamental in the agricultural industry that the progressive farmer should be assured of a reasonable price for his produce. With such an assurance, the progress of the farmer can go forward from the despised Killeshandra cow to the distinguished and illustrious Nenagh cow. The task is a fairly long and strenuous one and requires the application of skill and industry. In addition to that, it requires a very considerable investment of capital.
I was very much impressed by the report on post-war agricultural policy issued by Dr. Henry Kennedy dealing with milk production. He made a comparison between this country and New Zealand. He said that, from an investigation carried out in North Cork, the yield of butter fat per acre in that district was 40 lbs. The average yield found as a result of a similar investigation in New Zealand was 105 lbs. The average butter fat produced by one cow here in Ireland, according to this investigation, was 160 lbs. The average output of butter fat in New Zealand per cow was 227 lbs. He also showed that the average amount of butter fat per unit of workers engaged in the industry was 1,000 lbs. in North Cork and 4,560 lbs. in New Zealand. He acknowledged that New Zealand farmers enjoyed some slight climatic advantages, but he felt that the gap between output here and in New Zealand was far too wide.
The question that we have to face, if we are dealing with this matter in a long-term way, is how we are to raise the output per cow, the output per acre and the output per unit of workers employed here. I believe that one of the first essentials is to create confidence in the industry by an assurance of a decent reward and a definite assurance to the farmer that he shall have behind him the sympathy and support of his own agricultural Department, that no hindrance will be put on him because he has increased his output or because external markets have militated against prices. That is the first essential, and that is the essential outlined in this motion.
There are other things which are equally important. It is important that the quality and capacity of our dairy cows should be stepped up. There are two ways of achieving an improvement in the milk-yielding capacity of our cows.
One is to go in exclusively for milk producing breeds and for the heavy milk yielding strains. I suppose that is really the quickest way to get a high yield. But I think that, taking the long term view, that may not be the wisest course. In our economy we have to depend upon the store cattle and beef trade as well as on our dairy produce. I cannot speak, perhaps, with quite the same authority as some Deputies, but I believe that with concentration upon the task we could raise the milk producing capacity of the dairy shorthorn cow to an economic level. In that way we would have a breed producing a high average milk yield while at the same time providing for the store and fat cattle trade. From the outset I have acknowledged that that particular line of policy would not be as capable of such rapid development as would be the exclusive development of purely milking breeds. It is a line of policy that will require close application and attention over a period of years. I was somewhat depressed some time ago when a very progressive farmer said that he had been testing his cows for 30 years, that he had started with a good herd, that he still had a fairly good herd but that it was no better to-day than when he started.
One of the reasons why cow testing has not proved successful, apart from the fact that it has not been universally adopted, is because the elimination of inferior cows is slow. The farmer who goes in for cow testing and who wants to make his cow testing a success gets rid of his low-yielding cows. How does he do it? He goes to the market or the fair and passes them on to some other farmer. That farmer has to take a chance over a year of cow testing before he can find out whether he has been sold a dud. We have, too, the difficulty that accurate recordings of the progeny of high-yielding cows are not kept. We have the example of the heavy-yielding cow who produces 600 or 700 gallons in the year. All those factors militate against an improvement in our dairy shorthorn cows. If we are to succeed in eliminating the low-yielding cow and if we are to succeed in stepping up the milk producing capacity of our cows we must see that honest and accurate records are kept, not only of the cows but also of their progeny. The whole thing must be done in a business-like way from one end of the country to the other. That is the first essential. It may take some time to achieve our object, but it can be achieved. Next to improving our breed of cows we must improve the quality of our land.
I heard an expert—I think he was an expert of the Department of Agriculture—state recently that 80 per cent. of our agricultural land is deficient in fertilisers. That proportion of our land is impoverished. It is incapable of producing either the grass or the crops it should produce. There, again, is a wide field for improvement and expansion. These two objectives, combined with a reasonable improvement in byres, housing, equipment, and so on, on our dairy farms, are the three essentials to increasing output in the dairying industry. Will anyone suggest to me that those three vital improvements can be carried out without a fairly considerable capital investment in this industry?
It is very easy to laugh at the low-yielding cows in some creamery areas. I know there are areas where the yield per cow is low. That is due to the fact that over a long period of years our live-stock policy has been an injudicious one. We have not got the best type of milking stock. It is due also to the fact that our land is impoverished and that agricultural policy generally over a long period of years has tended to rob the soil of its fertility. We can remedy these two great evils of infertile soil and low-yielding dairy stock if we set ourselves to the task in a business-like way.
Over a long period of years the Department of Agriculture has been responsible in the main for the unproductive breeds of dairy cows that we have to-day. Those of us who remember 25 and 30 years ago know that there were in the country then better dairy cows than there are to-day. They may not have had the beautiful lines of conformation, as Department of Agriculture officials call it. They may not have been so handsome, but they certainly did produce milk. With the introduction of the beef shorthorn we have improved the quality of our store cattle to some extent, but we have not improved the milk-yielding capacity. We must try to remedy that state of affairs. We must try to maintain the store qualities of our shorthorns while at the same time stepping-up our milk production. That will require accurate registration and accurate recording of every shorthorn cow in the country.
If the Minister is prepared to assure the House that he accepts the point of view I have expressed and that he realises the necessity for an increased capitalisation of agriculture he will go a long way to meet our demands. The task is a heavy one requiring both application and efficiency, plus cooperation on the part of the farmers generally to improve the milk-yielding quality of our cows without destroying the store and beef trade. But it can be done. It should be done. I think a united effort on the part of all concerned will achieve it. I was glad to hear the Minister say that we can eliminate as far as the future is concerned the problem of a "surplus" in agriculture. There is no greater bugbear to the farmer than the argument that intensification of production by means of improved methods will result in his finding himself with a product that he cannot sell. I should like if the Minister would convey that message about the elimination of "surplus" to those who are engaged in supplying milk to this city. They know occasionally the meaning of that word and they know it to their intense dissatisfaction.
I have outlined briefly what ought to be done. Money has got to be put into this industry—not given as a dole or a sop but invested in it—and if that is done I am satisfied that the return will be adequate. As far as the supplying of milk to the city is concerned, there is a grievance in regard to the month of April. It has been mentioned in this House before. For some reason the Minister has included the month of April amongst the summer months. I do not know why he has done so but it has been a grievance for the past couple of years. I hope that that will be remedied and if it is remedied by giving the milk producer the same price in April as in March I think that it will be appreciated. I feel that that concession can be made without raising the price of milk to the consumers in Dublin. There is still a very wide margin between the price the farmer gets for his milk and the price charged to the consumer in the city.
I hope, therefore, that the Minister will accept this motion as courteously and as graciously as he accepted the motion which was before this House in regard to the price of pigs. I think we are going in the right direction if we establish confidence in the dairying industry and if we give the people engaged in that industry a feeling that they are not going to be let down or betrayed. They, on their part, will put their best energies into the industry and I am sure that after a time costs of production, owing to the increase in output, will be lowered so that eventually it will be possible to give the people cheaper milk in the cities and that, in turn, will have a beneficial effect so far as the butter supply position is concerned.
The raising of the consumption level of milk in all our towns and villages and in our cities also is a matter to which the Minister should give his earnest attention. We want to see milk not only produced under the best possible conditions, but sold under the best possible conditions, and we ought to encourage people to drink milk instead of stout. I think we can do that if we assure them that all through, both in its production stages and in its sale, milk is provided under the best possible conditions.
This motion will, I am sure, be received with goodwill and benediction by Deputies on all sides of the House. I have no doubt that Deputy Cogan's colleagues of the Farmers' Party will give full support, just as the other Deputies of the House, to this motion. This matter as to whether the farmers were getting a fair price for their production or not, an economic return, has been a burning question before Dáil Éireann for many years, and I am sure Dáil Éireann will agree that the farmer producer of milk, butter and such other commodities is entitled to his costs of production plus a reasonable profit. I doubt if it will be challenged or if it can be challenged by anyone that he is not getting that at present. The last time the price of milk was fixed—whether milk being supplied to creameries or milk being sold as liquid milk in the towns—was by the Minister's predecessor in the spring of 1947. Subsequent to that, those who are now the Minister's colleagues and who are sitting behind him moved a motion in this House protesting against the inadequate price that the then Minister for Agriculture allowed for milk—both milk supplied to creameries and milk sold for liquid consumption in the towns. Many things have changed since that time. The farmers' costs of production have not been reduced. They have gone up very considerably and very substantially in the past two years since milk prices were last fixed.
I understand that to-night the Minister for Agriculture raised a question of doubt as to whether the present price can be maintained or not. I am sure it was a bombshell to many Deputies to hear that there was any suggestion that the present prices should not be maintained and should not be increased. That information would be received as an absolute bombshell in the country. Surely the Minister was not serious in making the suggestion that the price of milk should be decreased to the producer? It just cannot happen. The farmer has had to meet many other increases— wages, both central and local taxation, and an increase in the cost of his machinery. The costs of production in creameries have gone up also and their interests must also be taken into consideration. There is the question of fuels of all kinds and, in addition, creameries have had to face increases in wages. It is important that these matters be considered because if prices have gone up to the creameries in the matter of fuel, oil, petrol, coal, salt, boxwood, labour costs, increased machinery costs and so on, the costs of production to creameries must be higher to-day than they were two years ago. The farmer, therefore, must be getting less in some way from the creameries than he was getting two years ago. There is no doubt about that.
Another very important class not mentioned in this motion but it is a class which, I am sure, Deputy O'Reilly and Deputy Cogan, who introduced the motion, will agree is part of the dairying industry, are the producers of farmers' butter.
Deputy Allen knows that this motion has to be put at 10.30 and that Deputy O'Reilly needs 20 minutes to conclude.
I shall give way to Deputy O'Reilly in two minutes.
I must ask the Deputy to conclude now.
Give me just one minute —until 10.10.
If Deputy O'Reilly is agreeable.
Yes.
I am thankful to the Deputy because I realise that they are a most precious 20 minutes during which he will need to convince the Minister of the importance of this motion. I am sure that Deputy O'Reilly, when he mentions the dairying industry here, has in mind the farmers who produce home butter. They are an important section of the community and they are being badly treated whether they live in Wexford, Cavan, the Midlands, the West or any other part of Ireland. No matter where they may live they are being very badly treated by this present Administration and by our present Minister for Agriculture. He has not given them a moment's thought. They are out in the wilderness but other dairying sections who send their milk to creameries get a subsidy. The home producer of butter has been left out in the cold. I hope he will be considered when this motion comes before the Minister for consideration.
In concluding this debate, I have very little to reply to, apart from figments of the imagination of certain Deputies. Let me preface my remarks by saying: "Truth may be blamed but it cannot be shamed." It may be ridiculed but it cannot be shamed. In introducing this motion, I took care to assemble the facts as far as it was possible for me to do so. I traced them from the period when milk prices to creameries were fixed in the spring of 1947. I traced the increased milk yields as a result of favourable weather. I even traced the increased value of the dropped calf so that I did not put any figure before the House over which I could not stand. Furthermore, I did not put figures of my own before the House. I put the figures of others, for and against the proposal to increase the price of milk. If any of these figures are wrong, nobody has challenged them so I think the House may take it that they are unchallengeable.
Perhaps it is as well for me to deal with the matters raised by the Minister first. The Minister more or less ridiculed the Killeshandra cow. Again let me say truth cannot be shamed. These are figures that can be discovered in the accounts of that cooperative society. I think I would not be wrong in saying that the Minister has these figures in his Department so that, if they are wrong, there is a chance to correct them. That is a true picture of the average yield not alone of the cows in Cavan but of the cows in Leinster, Connaught and Ulster, for the milk supply, as I mentioned, is drawn from the three counties of Longford, Leitrim and Cavan. Of course the law of averages governs everything. Why should it not also govern the price which the farmer realises on whatever line of work he takes up on his farm? The Minister has given us the figure of the cow testing association at Nenagh where the average cash return for the past year has been anywhere from £52 per cow to £65.
That was for the ten best cows.
We will accept it as that. However, can the Minister put up the average for cows supplying other creameries throughout the country and compare it with the figures I have put up for the creamery about which I am in a position to ascertain the figures? It would be interesting if he did so. It would give us some basis to work on, rather than telling us what is possible of achievement in the matter of an increased yield from cows in the years to come. That is a policy of "live horse and you will get grass." Do we adopt that policy with other sections of the community? I am quite prepared to admit that the average yield per cow in 1949 of 265 gallons of milk supplied to the creamery plus my estimate of 25 per cent. more retained at home—it is only an estimate because I have no chance of finding out definitely what amount is used at home—which would bring the total yield up to 331 gallons per cow, is a low average. I am quite sure that the average was not so low 20 or 25 years ago.
I had an early and active association with cow-testing so far back as the year 1924. The average on the farm on which I was born and reared was then well over 500 gallons, from a stock of cows that had been on the farm and which had been bred off from the year 1899. I retained that stock when I got control of the farm and continued breeding from them.
What was the result? One by one I had to let them go because they were no use. What brought that about? The bulls licensed by the Department of Agriculture under the Live Stock Breeding Act of 1925. There was a good stock of milking cows to begin with but the yield of each generation was falling off until, in the case of some of them, I am quite sure it was lower than 200 gallons. I made an effort to make use of the dairy bull in the district. At great inconvenience I travelled six or seven miles with the cows even in the busy period of the year, summer and harvest, and what did I get? The bull calves bred off these bulls I had to sell at £3 each less at a year old than if I had bred them off the non-pedigree bull in the same townland in which I lived. I got one heifer calf and what was the yield from her? Two hundred and twelve gallons in the first year as a heifer and 225 gallons on her second year as a milking cow although her dam had registered in over 600 gallons. Can we say then that cow-testing of itself is ever going to bring us into a strain of high-yielding cows? I do not say that cow-testing is useless by any means but it affords no guarantee that there will be an all-round increase in yield. Unless we get proven dairy bulls to breed from I claim that the Live Stock Breeding Act of 1925 has virtually ruined the dairy shorthorn cow for milk production. It has resulted in the production of better stores but it has taken much more away in the milking qualities of the cows than it has put into the store cattle.
The farmers supplying milk to the Killeshandra creamery do not want, as the Minister for Justice said, everything handed to them on a plate. They realised the low milk yield of the cows in the area and they made an effort to improve it. I was deputed to approach the Minister for Agriculture in 1948 to ask him to locate a proven dairy bull in the area and to establish an artificial insemination centre, so that as many as possible could avail of the services of that bull with a view to improving the milk yield of the cows in the years to come. That, I think, showed that the farmers in the district were anxious to improve the position.
They hope that that may be done yet. Furthermore, realising the poverty of the land and the miserable grass available as a result of the impoverishment of the land, due to its cultivation during the emergency without a sufficiency of farmyard manure and practically no artificial manure, the creamery society gave out on credit almost 1,000 tons of North African phosphate for putting on the grass lands in an effort to increase the milk yield. It did increase it. The average milk yield for 1949 was, I think, 30 gallons per cow higher than in 1948, so that I do not think anyone can cast any reflections on the farmers of that area. It is as good a demonstration of an effort at self-help as it is possible for any district in Ireland to give to-day.
The Minister for Justice made some remarks to which I think I should reply. He dealt with my quotation of the figures of the cost of producing milk on the farm attached to Grangegorman Mental Hospital and said:—
"I notice the Deputy did not give the reference to the Dáil Reports from which he was quoting when he said the Minister for Health told us what Grangegorman had to pay for the production of milk."
The reason I did not give the reference was my belief that it was so fresh in the minds of everyone that nobody needed to be reminded of it, but I will give it now. The first question was put to the Minister for Health on 21st February at column 323 of Volume 119 (3). There was a further question put to the Minister for Health on 28th February asking for items of costing and it is to be found at column 799. There is no secret behind it—anyone can investigate and find out if the figures are correct.
My reason for quoting that figure at all was my desire to make the point that the present price of milk, as well as the prices of other agricultural produce, does not enable the farmer to get a labourer's wage for his work. That was the only definite figure I had and I made use of it. I expect that the farm attached to that hospital is not uneconomic in size. It is not run by inefficient farmers or lazy farmers, or any farmers to which the epithets we have heard in the recent past can be applied. I expect it is run by hired labour and there is a chance that there may be a good deal of free labour from amongst the patients. It is labour which, I expect, is working under trade union conditions and it is evident that it cost 3/1 a gallon to produce the milk under trade union conditions and an estimated 2/10½ in 1949.
I do not want to reduce the conditions of employment of anyone, but I would like to raise the standard of the farmer and his unpaid family labour at least to the level of the agricultural worker. It is not a very high ambition and is not an extravagant ideal. It is obvious that on the present price of milk that is not possible, but even the Grangegorman institution is not an isolated case. We saw in the past year another farm of between 300 and 400 acres being worked entirely by hired labour, and the loss on the working of that farm in 1948 was £1,371. I do not want to make any statement without substantiating it. That was the farm at Lloyd, belonging to the urban council at Kells, and that was the report of the county manager in April of last year. The figures can be checked up in the local papers of 12th April.
As it is worded, the motion means that, on present prices, the farmer has not got the cost of production, but the question will arise of what is the cost of production. If I give a figure, it will be ridiculed, but we have the figures under trade union labour. I am not competent to say whether there was efficient production by that trade union labour or not, nor do I propose to examine it, but it brings us to the point at which we must regret greatly the fact that we have no authoritative statement as to the cost of production. If the motion put forward by Deputy Cogan and myself last year, which asked for the setting up of a number of farms in each county to ascertain the cost of production, had been accepted, we would now have it; but I maintain that the present price is not the cost of production, and I appeal to the Minister to set about increasing that price and to do so to such an extent as will give the farmer something approaching a labourer's wage.
Raising the price of milk above 1/2 per gallon?
Mr. O'Reilly
I claim 1/2 is not enough.
You want it raised above that?
Mr. O'Reilly
Yes.
Question put.
The Dáil divided: Tá, 58; Níl, 63.
Tá.
- Aiken, Frank.
- Allen, Denis.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Blaney, Neal T.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Bourke, Dan.
- Brady, Seán.
- Brennan, Thomas.
- Breslin, Cormac.
- Buckley, Seán.
- Burke, Patrick.
- Butler, Bernard.
- Carter, Thomas.
- Cogan, Patrick.
- Colley, Harry.
- Collins, James J.
- Corry, Martin J.
- Crowley, Honor Mary.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- De Valera, Vivion.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Friel, John.
- Gilbride, Eugene.
- Gorry, Patrick J.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Hilliard, Michael.
- Kennedy, Michael J.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Kilroy, James.
- Kissane, Eamon.
- Kitt, Michael F.
- Lahiffe, Robert.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick J.
- Lydon, Michael F.
- Lynch, John.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- McGrath, Patrick.
- Maguire, Patrick J.
- Moylan, Seán.
- Ó Briain, Donnchadh.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- O'Reilly, Patrick.
- Ormonde, John.
- O'Rourke, Daniel.
- Rice, Bridget M.
- Ruttledge, Patrick J.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Mary B.
- Ryan, Robert.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Walsh, Thomas.
Níl.
- Beirne, John.
- Belton, John.
- Blowick, Joseph.
- Browne, Noel C.
- Browne, Patrick.
- Byrne, Alfred.
- Byrne, Alfred Patrick.
- Coburn, James.
- Collins, Seán.
- Commons, Bernard.
- Corish, Brendan.
- Cosgrave, Liam.
- Costello, John A.
- Cowan, Peadar.
- Crotty, Patrick J.
- Desmond, Daniel.
- Dillon, James M.
- Dockrell, Maurice E.
- Donnellan, Michael.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Dunne, Seán.
- Esmonde, Sir John L.
- Everett, James.
- Murphy, William J.
- Norton, William.
- O'Gorman, Patrick J.
- O'Higgins, Michael J.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F.
- O'Leary, John.
- O'Sullivan, Martin.
- Palmer, Patrick W.
- Redmond, Bridget M.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Finucane, Patrick.
- Fitzpatrick, Michael.
- Flynn, John.
- Giles, Patrick.
- Halliden, Patrick J.
- Hickey, James.
- Hughes, Joseph.
- Keyes, Michael.
- Kinane, Patrick.
- Kyne, Thomas A.
- Larkin, James.
- Lehane, Con.
- MacBride, Seán.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McFadden, Michael Og.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- McQuillan, John.
- Madden, David J.
- Mongan, Joseph W.
- Morrissey, Daniel.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Reidy, James.
- Reynolds, Mary.
- Roddy, Joseph.
- Rooney, Eamonn.
- Sheldon, William A. W.
- Spring, Daniel.
- Sweetman, Gerard.
- Timoney, John J.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies O'Reilly and Cogan; Níl: Deputies Doyle and Kyne.
Motion declared lost.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.40 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Thursday, March 9th.