I represent a very large milk-producing constituency and I do not agree with Deputy Corry's interpretation of Professor Murphy's costings. I do not accept, nor will any farmer accept, that in those costings a calf is worth only £1, because the farmers realise that Fianna Fáil's day is done. I remember a time when a calf was worth nothing at all. Of course, that was a time when we were going to find so many other markets. Unfortunately for the farmers, so far from finding those markets, the farmers were left in such an impoverished state that they could not and did not meet, as they could otherwise have met, the impact of a war situation, not only to be in a position adequately to feed this country, but to have a surplus that would have been of amazing value to this country during the emergency period.
It sounds rather hypocritical, to put it mildly, to have to listen to advocates amongst the Opposition talk, as Deputy Smith did, about the colossal failures of the present Minister for Agriculture in view of the fact that the full period of their office was decorated, year after year and month after month, with the grossest of blunders which reduced the proud independent farming stock of this country to a state of near penury and beggary and that left our farmers without the right to think for themselves or to manage the husbandry of their farms in their own way. These people come into this House and, at wearisome length, just talk rubbish.
There are a few problems in which I am interested, not in that jealous, violent and vituperative way that Deputy Smith is interested in them. I am interested in the flax problem. I do not subscribe to the view that the Minister tried to bluff the Northern spinners. I think he tried to play a man's part and to do a manly job in an Irish way. I do not approve of the hat-in-hand, the bowing of the knee, tactics to anybody. I do say it is within the right of the Minister to urge on his colleague, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, if flax is a commercial proposition and a good crop for this country, the establishment of a linen industry in the Twenty-Six Counties which should be able to compete with the Northern spinners and beat them at their own game. My belief is that flax-growing will die out inevitably if some basis is not found for the consumption of the crop at home, because I know perfectly well that, if the opportunity presents itself to the Northern spinners to get their requirements anywhere else at less cost, they will forget all about any flax that is grown in the Twenty-Six Counties.
I think, despite what Deputy Smith suggested, that it is necessary to retain our flax inspectors. There is going to be a considerable amount of flax grown in my constituency. The spinners down there have heard what the Minister had to say and the growers there know what his attitude is. If those people want to go outside the advice of the Minister, they are perfectly at liberty to do so. If the crop pays them they are entitled to grow it, but I do not think it is fair or right, or that it is a bit becoming that, in his vituperative hate through loss of office, an ex-Minister should try to discredit his successor because his successor took what we in this House believe to have been an honest man's stand in a dispute.
Deputy Smith suggested that when the bluff was called, as he liked to put it, the Minister should have turned around and said, "please, what will you give me?" God forbid that the present Minister for Agriculture, James Dillon, is going to change his nature to that extent. I am urging on the Minister that he should use his judgment and his known powers of persuasion to see that flax, if we are to continue to grow it in this country, will have its own source of user, and that, if the Department is going to urge a continuance of the growing of flax, arrangements be made to have in the Twenty-Six Counties the necessary plant and factory to consume and use Irish flax. I suggest that is a matter that deserves careful inquiry. I am urging on the Minister that he should deal with flax on that basis. I think it would be very bad, nationally, if we were ever to see a mendicant farmer begging at the door of any vested interest in the North of Ireland for a price for his crop.
On the general question of cereal growing, I would say to the Minister that there is a very great need to have the country emblazoned again from end to end with the slogan immortalised by the late Paddy Hogan: "One more cow, one more sow and one more acre under the plough." I know that he has met, as was inevitable, the cross of an irritable and displaced Opposition, with all possible types of sabotage. Despite that I urge on the Minister that he should continue to urge on the Irish farmer to grow more and more cereals to feed his own live stock, so that ultimately our produce can compete, on merit alone, with that to be found in any market in any part of the world.
I heard in this House a tremendous amount of criticism of the Minister's milk policy. Nobody on the Opposition, however, has paused for a moment to consider that, for the first time in the history of this country, the present Minister for Agriculture has asked the primary producers to have a talk with him as to what they will do. There are no directions now and there are no threats of persecution or of invoking the mighty arm of the law as happened when Deputy Smith was in office. Instead, there is now an invitation to the primary producers to discuss the matter with the Minister, in the light of the knowledge available to the Department, as to what is best for the future of the industry. The Opposition were disgusted when the price of milk was not reduced overnight. It was blazoned throughout the country — it was the lying rumour which they are so competent in spreading—that a reduction was coming overnight, but it did not happen. Instead, the creameries and the farmers' representatives were asked to come and discuss the problem with the Minister. They were told that there would be no reduction in the price of milk unless the farmer himself agreed to it.
