I presume Deputy Cogan realises and appreciates that an Adjournment debate cannot be used to advocate legislation?
Committee on Finance. - Adjournment Debate—Land Rehabilitation Project.
Quite. One of the purposes of raising matters on the Adjournment is to try to indúce Ministers to be just a little bit civil when answering questions asked in this House. I asked a question to-day in regard to the fertiliser credit scheme which the Minister announced in the course of his concluding speech on the Estimate for his Department. I asked him if he intended to introduce proposals for legislation to implement that scheme and the Minister, in reply, said that he was not yet in a position to add anything to the statement he made when concluding the debate on the Estimate for Agriculture. I asked then if, in view of the interest in this scheme and its urgency, he would undertake to give the scheme the utmost publicity so that farmers would be able to understand its scope and its terms and be able readily to avail of it. I think that was a reasonable question to ask. I thought it was a question of some urgency.
The Minister is aware that for a number of years I have been advocating credit facilities for farmers generally. In this particular matter I have advocated the extension of the land rehabilitation scheme to cover land which does not require drainage or the other forms of rehabilitation provided for in the scheme but which has become impoverished. The Minister flatly refused to accept the view that the land rehabilitation scheme should be extended to cover such land. I do not know why he adopted such a hostile attitude towards such a reasonable scheme. Anybody who gives the matter any consideration will realise that land which is fundamentally sound will, if it is restored to fertility, produce a great deal more, proportionately, than land which has been waterlogged perhaps for many years, which may not have the necessary degree of fertility and which, in addition, may require very considerable maintenance to keep the drainage scheme in operation.
It is because the Minister has, all along, been so hostile to the idea of extending the land rehabilitation scheme to this particular type of land that I feel it is urgently necessary to impress upon him that his proposals in his statement on the debate on agriculture must be implemented. I know that the Minister has been in some way or another forced to adopt this suggestion and he may be adopting it very reluctantly. I know it is possible for the Minister to sabotage this scheme just as he tried to sabotage the scheme which I forced upon him in regard to the purchase of oats some years ago. I know that the Minister's statement, in reply to the debate on agriculture, did not give this particular extension of the land rehabilitation scheme any great praise. He merely suggested that it had been represented that such a scheme was necessary and that he was going to implement it. I think we will expect more than that from the Minister. We will expect that this scheme will be given wholehearted and enthusiastic support by the Minister and his Department, that it will be publicly advertised and brought to the notice of farmers generally, and that publicity for this scheme will be put into effect immediately, because it must be remembered that the output of our land is extremely low in comparison, perhaps, with that of other countries similarly circumstanced. The output per man in agriculture is low. One of the ways to raise that output is to increase the fertility of the soil. A great deal can be done to improve and increase the fertility of the soil during the latter part of the year—during the months of November, December and January—by the application of fertilisers and lime to our pasture lands.
Now that we are approaching the Summer Recess, it is possible that unless the scheme is put into immediate operation it will not be availed of fully during the coming winter. That is the particular note of urgency I want to press in regard to this matter. Of course, there will be delays in getting this scheme into full operation. When the scheme is announced the farmers will have to make application. Inspectors or officers of the Minister's Department will have to be sent to inspect the land in question and to take the necessary soil tests. On the results of these soil tests the manure and lime will be provided. That will entail some delay and unless the matter is taken up enthusiastically, urgently and immediately, there is a danger that this scheme may not give its full results or may not be put into full effect during the coming winter.
I want the Minister to give the House some further information now in regard to this matter. It may be, and I think it is very evident, that the implementation of the promise made by the Minister will entail legislation but I think that that should not delay him in going ahead with the scheme. I speak subject to correction but I think that it would be possible for the Minister to undertake the preliminary work of implementing this scheme pending the passage of legislation. It should be possible for him to have the scheme advertised and to invite applications, and that might be done even before the necessary legislation is enacted.
In this matter we must call for, we must demand, the wholehearted co-operation of the Minister. We do not want this scheme to be put into operation in a half-hearted way, and perhaps then be told that people did not feel quite as enthusiastic as we who advocated the scheme expected. If the Minister does not want the scheme I know it is always possible for him to prevent it. But I warn him that I will be at his heels very closely, and if he fails to implement this scheme fully along the lines I have indicated I am afraid he will be asking for a certain amount of trouble and a certain number of questions being raised on the Adjournment and otherwise.
I have not very much to add to what I have said. I might, however, mention that the Minister, in the course of his rather impertinent reply, said that I had voted against his Estimate, and apparently he was using that as a reason for refusing to give me the information I asked for. I did not vote against it——
Prevarication.
The members of the legal profession could interpret that word "prevarication" better than a farmer. I have never prevaricated in regard to any matter; I have been perfectly straightforward and open in dealing with agricultural policy. I have advocated certain lines of policy in regard to agriculture persistently for the past ten years and I have fought to get these points of policy implemented, regardless of the Minister in office—I have not any interest in what person holds the office of Minister. I am anxious that a sound agricultural policy will be put into operation, and decent credit facilities are the first essential of a sound agricultural policy.
The credit provided in this particular scheme which the Minister indicated in the debate on agriculture is desirable. All we ask is that his promise should be implemented fully and honestly. We do not want the same action taken by the Minister as was taken in regard to my tom-fool scheme, as he called it, for the purchase of cats. We want this provision of credit for the restoration of our impoverished land, and the importance of this matter should be brought home to farmers with the full co-operation of the Minister's officials. That co-operation could be in the form of taking soil tests, so that every farmer, where the soil is impoverished and not producing its maximum output, will be in a position to bring his land into a condition of maximum productivity within a very short space of time. That is all I ask for, and I think it is a fair and reasonable request.
It is necessary to underline and to emphasise that in the most deliberate way, because of the Minister's past attitude towards this proposal. There is a danger that he may not give it his wholehearted support. I have before me a statement he made on 5th July, 1949—Volume 117, column 129—when the Land Reclamation Bill was before the House. He said:—
"I am utterly at a loss to see why any man's neighbours should go in and provide profit for the man who owns the land and will not cultivate it while that man sits upon his sash and collects the boodle."
I do not know what the Minister means by a farmer sitting on his sash or collecting his boodle, but those are the words the Minister used. When I advocated this self-same scheme 12 months ago, when I put down a motion to extend the Land Reclamation Bill to include a provision of this kind, the Minister succeeded in getting it ruled out of order. Because of that and other things, because of the facts to which I have referred, it is essential that somebody will have to keep a close watch on the Minister so as to ensure that he cooperates wholeheartedly in implementing this scheme.
Not for the first time am I forced to the conclusion that Deputy Cogan's purpose this evening is both dishonest and mischievous. I do not believe that he wants further and better information. I believe that he wants to rehabilitate his rather ragged reputation in the County Wicklow.
Deputy Cogan's proposal is the traditional proposal of the beggarman—that he should get something for nothing. He suggested at an earlier stage that, in addition to rehabilitating the land in a state of dereliction beyond the capacity of the average farmer in this country to retrieve, we should go in upon the lands of relatively prosperous farmers and, on a subsidised basis, provide them with fertilisers.
I suggested nothing of the kind.
I did ask Dáil Eireann to sanction expenditure on the rehabilitation of land in this country and I submitted to the Dáil that, for reasons historical as well as geophysical, a great many of our people found themselves in possession of land which was not capable of yielding its maximum return, but which could be made to yield its maximum return; but I pointed out that the operations requisite to enable the land to do so demanded the use of machinery, the capital cost of which was far beyond the reach of the average farmer in this country.
I made the submission, realising that we were faced with a dilemma, realising that having elected deliberately to abolish landlords and to fix our people on the land as owner farmers, we had destroyed the potential accumulation of capital which the landlords might have employed to rehabilitate those lands, albeit their property was producing income from tenant farmers, and I asked the community to step in and do for our farmer proprietors that which the landlords would have done if we had elected to leave them in the ownership of the land and our own people their oppressed tenants.
I justify the request to Dáil Eireann, that the community should find three-fifths of the cost of the operation, on the ground that our people have fought long and strenuously to get possession of the land and have impoverished themselves and their families in that struggle; and, inasmuch as that struggle laid the foundations from which the ultimate effort for national independence had become possible, the community might legitimately repay those who had made the ultimate struggle possible by sharing the cost of rehabilitating their land. Deputy Cogan, with the traditional mentality of the beggarman, intervenes at once——
I protest against that statement. I am a farmer and live on the land. That is where the Minister differs from me.
——and says, when he sees that some people will get none of the spoils: "The Minister is proposing that only those whose land is run down would have access to the public purse; what about the farmer whose land is not run down—is he not going to get any of the slush?" I tried to demonstrate to the Deputy that the Land Rehabilitation Project would be no enterprise for distributing slush to avaricious farmers. It was a project specifically designed to make every acre of land as productive as our exertions could make it, in the confidence that, if we did, those who owned the land would use it to better advantage than any beggarman from outside or inside this country. I tried to make that point, and it is to that the Deputy refers when he reads a quotation out of its context, that it was irrational to propound that the community should pay three-fifths of the cost of fertilisers applied to farmers' land, on the presumption that such application would yield an abundant profit when the harvest came, and that only the beggarman could ask his neighbours to provide him with the raw materials of immediate profit and that I did not believe that the farmers of this country were beggarmen.
I demanded the scheme which the Minister is now implementing.
If the Deputy imagines that, by holding out the farmers of County Wicklow to this House as beggarmen, he will glean votes at the next General Election, he is making the greatest mistake of his life. He will get the beggarmen's votes but, thanks be to God, they represent a microscopic minority of our people.
The Minister will get the smugglers' votes.
This is no plan for beggarmen.
Or for smugglers.
This is a plan for farmers who are prepared to contribute hard work—and that is the last thing beggarmen ever contemplate. This is a plan to offer the farmers who have land and the will to work, but who are short of capital, the opportunity of getting their soil tested and the appropriate fertilisers to correct the deficiencies revealed by that soil test, on the understanding that they shall not have recourse to this source of credit again until their first borrowing is discharged. This is a scheme for independent farmers, this is a scheme for the kind of men who are worthy of their fathers' struggle. It is no good to beggarmen——
Or to smugglers.
——because beggarmen can get one kind of dole under this if they look for it, but the scheme will provide that if they get it as a dole once they will never get it again. Their own laziness will have stopped that. These schemes hold little hope for Deputy Cogan's friends, but for the farmers——
It is the exact scheme I have been advocating, is it not?
It is a scheme that never occurred to the Deputy's mind. I never heard the Deputy advocate anything in this House that bespoke hard work, that bespoke honest dealing, that Everything the Deputy has advocated in this House has been a representation that his supporters were those who wished to batten on their neighbours——
That is a damned lie.
——and get grants for nothing——
The Minister is an unscrupulous little bounder.
——and get the country to keep them. There is nothing whatever in this scheme to make provision for the kind of people who want to live at the expense of their neighbours.
That is a slander on the farmers.
This is a scheme designed for honest farmers and there will be very few of those found amongst the fools who support the Deputy. Full and adequate publicity will be given for these proposals and it will be addressed to honest farmers who are too proud to live upon their neighbours and too proud to do less than their best on their own holdings. To such farmers credit can be given safely, in the certainty not only that what is borrowed will be repaid, but also that what is borrowed will be used to the best advantage not only of the borrowing farmer, but of the nation to which he belongs. That is a realisation which I did not expect the Deputy to understand. Those of us who are more familiar with the real farmers of this country than he can ever hope to be confidently provide a service of this kind, not on any eleemosynary basis, but in the certainty that these men will faithfully repay 20/- of every £1 they borrow and be glad of the opportunity to do so on the earliest occasion their circumstances permit.
The Dáil adjourned at 11.30 p.m. to 10.30 a.m. on Wednesday, 12th July, 1950.