I move:—
That a supplementary sum not exceeding £10 be granted to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending the 31st day of 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.
The additional sums required come under several heads, but there are savings on other sub-heads of the Vote which meet the additional expenditure envisaged, with the exception of £10. The first sub-head in regard of which there is an increase is in respect of travelling expenses. That increase becomes necessary, partly because during the year the mileage rate allowed to various officers of the Department has increased, and is in part due to the fact that when the last Estimate was made the venue of the meeting of the Food and Agriculture Organisation was not determined and it was thought it would likely meet in some place in Europe. It subsequently transpired that it would be held in Washington and provision in dollars had to be made in that connection. It is right that the House should know that, whereas under the existing arrangement, the contribution made by this country was $53,000, as a result of representations made to the relevant sub-committee at the conference last December Ireland's contribution was reduced to $44,500 and we are not without hope that, on a further review which is at present being made, it will be further reduced to $36,000.
Sub-head E (3) relates to the contributions made to a variety of international agricultural organisations to which we belong — the International Dairy Federation, the International Veterinary Bureau, the International Committee for Control of Colorado Beetle and the International Wheat Council. A good many of these subscriptions are payable in dollars and that is one reason why it became necessary to increase the appropriation consequent on devaluation.
Sub-head E (4) refers to a grant made to University College to conduct a special investigation into the methods appropriate for the control of potato root eel worm. Unfortunately, in the Athlone area we had built up a very satisfactory business of growing seed potatoes but, owing to the practice which has grown up of growing potatoes repeatedly on the same land, this pest appeared. Our certificate, which is internationally accepted, guarantees that no seed potatoes are produced on any land where potato eel worm has been discovered. The result is that we have been obliged to restrict the seed potato industry, for the time being in any case, in that area. We are taking steps however, to provide substitute occupation in the form of producing soft fruits for jam manufacture in order to compensate those who can no longer grow seed potatoes for export.
Sub-head F (1) refers to additional moneys required for the schools and farms. The principal part is £47,690, which included the purchase price of a farm at Grange. Grange is about 21 miles from Dublin. We had a place called Chantilly, near Foxrock, where all pedigree live stock were assembled and vetted prior to distribution through the country. We held that on a series of leases of a most complicated nature and we paid a substantial rent for it. It was not a very convenient place and, in the course of time, it became completely built up. We wanted a farm where the business of supplying liquid milk to the City of Dublin could be conducted with a view to determining in some measure what the economics of that business were. We wanted a farm where we could maintain a central depot for artificial insemination. It was the complex of these two considerations that indicated Grange, because one of the essentials for successful artificial insemination is to have a supply of proven bulls. The difficulty of proving bulls is that you cannot declare a bull to be a proven bull until its daughters have entered their first lactation; and, by the time the first progency of a bull have entered their first lactation, the bull is over five years old.
Ordinarily in the country farmers do not like having old bulls because they have a tendency to get a bit cross. Our purpose therefore is, as pedigree bulls are assembled for distribution, to have them recorded at Grange farm, to record their female progeny and to keep a watch on the female progeny out in the country; and, if the records from the country substantially confirm our own records at Grange, we will classify such a bull to be a proven bull and use him in the artificial insemination centres for the three or four remaining years of his useful life. Grange, therefore, is designed to fill three essential purposes and most of the expense will be offset by the saving on the surrender of our leasehold at Chantilly. This sub-head also makes provision for Johnstown Agricultural College. The increase there is largely due to the happy success of the soil-testing service which is operated there and which has resulted in the employment of additional staff made necessary by the demands coming in from the country. We now have three complete soil-testing units and we are in a position to return any soil sample submitted to us within ten days of its submission with the appropriate report.
Sub-head G (5) is the scheme I have referred to as the soft fruit substitute for the seed potato business which we have had to discourage in that area.
Sub-head H (2) is the provision we must make in this year for the parish scheme under which it is proposed, where the county committee desires to undertake the work, that the advisory and technical staff of the county committee will be transferred to the Department, together with the services of such agricultural instructors as the county committee may then have in their service. If the county committee, for instance, has two instructors they will be transferred or seconded to us but the county committee will continue to pay their salaries. We will ascertain the total number of parishes in the area and to each three parishes there will be allocated a parish agent who will thereafter represent in that area the Department of Agriculture for all its several services, there being maintained, as there always has been in the Department, a staff of specialists on whom the parish agent will call if he finds himself confronted with any particular problem that requires specialist attention for its solution and resolution. Inasmuch as the scheme is not yet under way, I do not propose to dwell unduly on it now as it will be more appropriate to speak comprehensively on it when the main Estimate is being discussed by the House.
Sub-head K represents a special grant to enable Comhlucht Siuicre Éireann to defray the expenses of demonstrations given in potato silage. We are beholden to Comhlucht Siuicre Éireann for their enterprise in securing the appropriate equipment. This grant is one for which, in my opinion, we are getting very good value. That company brought the plant from farm to farm and undertook to boil potatoes in bulk lots for ensiling on the farmers' premises. Anyone engaged in pig feeding in this country may rest assured that there is no more economic or advantageous method of providing the basic diet of a considerable herd of pigs other than of ensiling potatoes and thereby avoiding all the complications of sprouting in the pit and so forth.
Sub-head M (14) is a sub-head in which I take some pride because it is the one under which we launched the scheme for the control of contagious abortion and for the elimination of fluke, stomach worms and hoose in cattle. In certain other countries no less than three or four attempts were made to initiate a system of universal inoculation of cows and heifers against contagious abortion and every attempt petered out. Fortunately here, it took on from the very outset. All the veterinary surgeons, on whose assistance we have so successfully depended, have been working overtime and we have actually distributed 110,000 doses. I might add that our highest hopes had not induced us to make provision for more than 40,000 doses. I know this extra expenditure will be warmly welcomed by the House, more especially as I am in a position to tell the House that to my own personal knowledge in two herds where the incidence of contagious abortion was from three to five cases every year for many years past no case of contagious abortion has occurred during the past 12 months.
In regard to hoose and stomach worms, our first venture was in Loophead. We have since pressed forward on those lines throughout the country. I was happy to hear from the parish priest of Bansha the day before yesterday that, whereas losses among calves had been proverbially heavy in that area from this disease, during last winter not one single calf was lost from any of these three conditions in the whole of that parish.
Sub-head O — flour and wheaten meal subsidies. This is a provision made in respect of subsidy on flour.
Sub-head Q — This provision is made to enable Messrs. Grain Importers (Eire) Limited to be recouped the loss incurred by them on the disposal of oatmeal imported under the following circumstances.
The 1947 oats acreage was 826,362, the total production of oats being 652,850 tons. The annual requirements of the Irish Oatmeal Millers are about 40,000 tons of oats — sufficient to produce about 20,000 tons of oatmeal. According to a statement furnished by the Department of Industry and Commerce, the oatmeal millers obtained only about 20,000 tons of oats from the 1947 crop and towards the end of that year, the Department of Industry and Commerce came to the conclusion that, in the circumstances, and in view of a shortage of other cereals, the import of oats or oatmeal was necessary to make up the expected deficiency, that is, approximately 20,000 tons of oats or 10,000 tons of oatmeal. In view of the high price of Australian oats, the non-availability of Canadian oats, and the danger of oat imports being counted against the allocation of other cereals, Industry and Commerce considered that imports should be in the form of oatmeal. After consultation between that Department and the Flake Oatmeal Millers' Association, Messrs. Grain Importers (Eire) Limited were instructed to buy 5,000 tons of Canadian and 4,000 tons of Australian oatmeal. The quantity purchased was 8,835 tons—4,973 Canadian; 3,862 Australian—at a landed price of approximately £50 per ton. At this price only 3,300 tons approximately were sold to oatmeal millers.
Owing to the bumper oats harvest of 1948—880,083 acres; 792,100 tons— Grain Importers were unable to dispose of the remaining 5,500 tons of oatmeal, in which maggots had appeared, to the oatmeal millers at £50 per ton. Bids were invited from the Flake Oatmeal Millers' Association, who declined to make any offer as they considered that the oatmeal had deteriorated, and was unfit for human consumption. The flour millers also declined to use the oatmeal to the extent of 5 per cent. in the manufacture of flour, because they considered it unsuitable for the purpose.
Accordingly, so far as the home market was concerned, disposal for animal feeding became the only outlet and the Department of Agriculture came into the picture. On 21st September, 1948, after discussion with representatives of Grain Importers it was decided to offer the oatmeal to compound feeding-stuff manufacturers at £30 per ton delivered. On the same day, Finance sanction was sought. It was mentioned to Finance that there was some prospect of recovering part of the loss from profits on expected barley imports. Finance sanction was duly granted, that Department proposing at the same time that the balance of the loss should be recovered by an adjustment in the cost of maize.
Only 400 tons approximately were sold at £30 per ton, and the balance of the surplus stock — approximately 5,200 tons — was finally sold to Belgian and Swiss buyers, maggots and all, at prices ranging from £21 7s. 6d. to £30 per ton c. and f. Antwerp. The net loss on this operation is liquidated by the appropriations here outlined. The savings are set out under several heads.
If the Opposition desires me to do so, I shall go into details on these savings, or if they wish information in regard to any particular one of the sub-heads, I shall be glad to give it.
