Not yet. That is for future consideration. With Deputy Corry's inventive mind, there is no knowing where he will stop. The county committee asked for suggestions. I do not claim, like my friend, Deputy Corry, that I made the world, but I put up two suggestions. First, I said:—
"Ask the Minister again to get the chemical experts working in the Department."
And, secondly, I suggested that the preservation notices by farmers in the various daily and weekly newspapers when rabbits can be sold for 2/- or 3/- apiece should cease. They accepted my advice, with the result that very few rabbits are to be seen or heard of at the moment. There must be a big decline in the number of rabbits. I do not believe that they are completely exterminated, but certainly the number has been very substantially reduced. That was as a result of an agreement made by the present Minister and his Department with the Ministry of Food in England.
I take this opportunity of thanking the Minister for never at any time funking going across and meeting any Minister in London or any other English town. We had Ministers before and it was only through back doors, on railway stations and through so-called accidental contacts that they met the British Ministers. As a matter of fact, Deputy Aiken had to go to America to contact a British Minister from whom he bought Springfield rifles at £1 apiece.
Deputy Smith, last night, asked questions about how the negotiations fell through in regard to eggs. I interrupted him to say that it was by way of reprisal on the part of the British Government against this Government because they had declared the Republic, which half the Fianna Fáil people do not like and the other half like but they are sorry it was not done by them.
We will not plead for mercy for the casualties amongst the Irish farmers as a result of reduced prices. This is a reprisal on the part of England, just as there were reprisals in the time of the last Government. Take the economic war. Everything was attributed to the economic war. The fact was that you had an incompetent body of Ministers exploiting the public and availing of the economic war as an excuse. We could put forward that excuse, if we liked, but there is a war on and we will not put up our hands and look for clemency. Neither will we use it as an excuse to our fellow Irish men and women for a certain reduction that took place in the price of agricultural commodities, live stock. etc.
I ask the Minister through the Chair to fight that case as it should be fought, on the beaches, with the British Ministry with whichever Minister is concerned in the particular negotiations at present proceeding. There is only one way to meet an Englishman, that is, to meet him face to face, having neither an inferiority nor superiority complex. Deputy Smith last night mentioned that Deputy de Valera asked him some time ago what he thought about the British Ministers and British representatives who were negotiating an agreement. Deputy Smith said that he thought they were fine honest men. I think the same about them but, if it is a business war between our Ministers and the British Ministers, I am behind our Ministers 100 per cent. and I have 100 per cent. confidence in them that eventually they will come out on top.
Last night, Deputy Smith, irrelevantly, as I thought, referred to the strike by the agricultural workers in County Dublin and the Minister said, "hear, hear," to one of his remarks. I do not know whether the Minister meant that in jest or in seriousness. I am not extreme in my outlook as regards differences that, possibly, could be resolved by means other than strike action but I maintain that the County Dublin farm labourer is as much entitled to strike as the bank clerks, school teachers, Córas Iompair Éireann employees. They have a recognised trade union. When all fruit fails, welcome haws. The agricultural labourers are the hewers of wood and drawers of water and they would be relegated to that inferior status by some of the people who at one time publicly shouted from the housetops: "We are the poor man's Government." What an amazing change of face. Deputy Corry made a statement during an election that anyone with 100 acres or over was a rancher. I will be kind in saying that he is now a rancher. I will be very kind in saying that he is a rancher and a half. I will go no further. I do not intend, although it is very hard to resist the temptation, to be as scurrilous as Deputy Sugar Ray Corry or Deputy Barley Corn Corry. Without making a protest, he allowed malting barley to be sold to Guinness for 30/- per barrel at a time when feeding barley was being purchased by some of us down the country on the black market for £2 per barrel and we are told that this was to allow a sufficient amount of wheat to be grown in the country. Could we not do the very same? I do not see what is to prevent us. I hope the Minister will never revert to the tactics that were employed by an incompetent Ministry in handling the affairs of the agricultural community.
Deputy Corry had a motion on the Order Paper with regard to the price of milk, but I noticed recently that it has been taken off. He was going a step further than Deputy O'Reilly. Deputy Corry wanted to increase the price of milk to consumers, particularly in the Cork Milk Board area. Of course that was not specifically mentioned, but we all know the individualism attached to Deputy Corry and his Party knows it. In a debate in this House before the inter-Party Government came into power in regard to holidays for the agricultural workers, Deputy Dr. Ryan who was then Minister said:—
" Of course Deputy Corry knows all the questions and the answers about the agricultural community."
We had a recital this evening of all the benefits that Deputy Corry, according to himself, brought about for the Irish farmer. Two years ago barley was being sold in Cork for a certain price. There were various agents around the county anxious to pay an enhanced price for barley, but it turned out that every one of these people was in a racket. There still existed in their minds the era that had existed before this Government came into power, the era of black markets and rackets. These were appointed agents—I think self-appointed agents. I never heard a word from the Beet Growers' Association about their activities until I brought it before the Cork County Council as a matter of urgent importance, and somebody left the chamber immediately. The next thing was that legal proceedings were instituted. Deputy Corry to-day calmly claims credit for that. It will always be remembered, however, in various places that malting barley was sold at £1 less than the figure at which it should be sold, and that that got the benediction and perhaps the imprimatur at that time of Deputy Corry. I am purposely using the word "imprimatur", because as far as I can see he has taken over the functions of the Opposition in regard to agricultural policy. Besides being an expert in scurrility, he has now taken on himself the formulation of schemes from which he says the agricultural community will benefit and this country will become a land flowing with milk and honey.
Probably the Opposition or Deputy Corry may be preparing for a general election. I must say for him that he is as good a man on a platform as ever I heard to say things that he does not intend to do. Perhaps telling the lie all the time may gain him a certain amount of support, but there is always the danger of his being found out. I think you will find in this country, as in every other country in the world, that a continuation of deliberate lying will ultimately militate against the election of a Deputy in any particular constituency. That is so in regard to the particular community for whom Deputy Corry professes to have so much solicitude.
After nailing them to the cross, he proceeded to wipe the blood from their faces, and now he proposes to bring about the resurrection of the farming community. He poses as the saviour of that community, but I think that the Cork farmers are not as gullible as Deputy Corry thinks. It would be very hard for him to go into Cobh and explain why he put down a motion to benefit the farming community but which would have the effect of raising the price of milk for consumers in Cobh, Fermoy, Midleton, Youghal and Mitchelstown. These I think are the five principal towns in the constituency.
I agree that in certain parts of this country the farmers who are supplying milk to creameries are entitled to an increase, but I can say with all sincerity that to give an increase all round would involve the victimisation of those suppliers to the creameries which are engaged in butter production alone. Butter production does not pay as well as cheese, chocolate crumb and dried milk. It is amazing that some of the people who were big noises in the creamery, where these sidelines that I have mentioned are being produced, were the spearhead of the attack on the Minister. I think it only fair to the Minister to put on record that when this Government got into power there were 500 tons of cheese in the stores of the Mitchelstown Co-operative Creamery. An application for an export licence was made some time in October, 1947, but Deputy Smith, the then Minister for Agriculture, refused it. It was repeated in November and refused, repeated again in January and refused. These 500 tons of cheese were then going to be put underground, as within a month it would be good for nothing. It was depreciating day after day. I remember once asking the question: "How long will cheese remain good"? and I was told that it depreciates from the day it is manufactured. The present Minister was not a week in office when he gave these people a licence, and, as a matter of fact, did not specify the number of tons that was to be exported. As a result, Mitchelstown Creamery exported more cheese in 1948 than in any year before. With the able assistance of Deputy Corry and Deputy Aiken, some members of the committee who are saturated with political affiliations never had the decency to appreciate the kindly gesture of the Minister for Agriculture in giving them that licence, which was a benefit to themselves and a benefit to the suppliers of the Mitchelstown Co-operative Creamery.
When we asked, through the Minister for Agriculture, to go easy in cheese production, the request was made the subject of a full dress rehearsal in this House. It was even introduced on the Taoiseach's Estimate. The suppliers to the Mitchelstown creameries will remember Deputy Smith's incursions to their premises from time to time. They will remember one particular week. I think is was in 1946, when he told them, "You will only have to pay so much for skimmed milk because if you pay what you are able to pay, that will militate against the rearing of calves in this country." He came back to Dublin and, within a fortnight, he put his name to a licence for a cheese factory in Charleville. I suppose there is no necessity for me to explain that cheese is manufactured out of whole milk. The only thing you get out of the manufacture of cheese is whey which is beneficial for the rearing of pigs, but not of calves. I do not know if experiments were ever carried out with regard to it beyond that.
Deputy Smith, in his official capacity as Minister for Agriculture in a Fianna Fáil Government, came down to the Mitchelstown creameries and told them that they could not give what they were going to give for skimmed milk, but Deputy Smith in opposition is a changed man entirely. The poor farmers, according to Deputy Smith with tears running down his face, are being mulcted, squashad and over-ridden by a Minister who, according to him, has no such solicitude for their betterment or their present position. I suppose there is no use in being retrospective and that we should let the dead past bury itself. I do not quite agree with that.
Take the case of our Minister for Agriculture and his forebears. His father, John Dillon, when he faced the carbines of the Royal Irish Constabulary on the square of Mitchelstown in 1887 showed his solicitude for the Irish farmer. He showed that he was prepared to sacrifice his life in demonstrating that solicitude. I need not go back to the Minister's grandfather, John Blake Dillon, but we know that at times scurrilous remarks have been made about the Minister across the floor of this House.
