When I was dealing with this matter last night we had very fluent objections from Deputy Dillon to having the question of white flour debated on this Estimate. I can quite understand the reason for his objections. We all know that in rural areas the ration of bread is never sufficient for the ordinary working countryman or the ordinary man engaged in heavy work. That ration has to be supplemented and the manner in which it was supplemented by the late Minister is something to be deplored. The late Minister, Deputy Dillon, told the farmers that they would have no more inspectors—and then he came along and threw those inspectors into the bakeries of this country in order to prevent an ounce of bread over the ration being supplied, particularly in the rural areas.
Committee on Finance. - Vote 27—Agriculture (Resumed).
On a point of order. I submit that the Minister for Agriculture is no longer responsible for this service. I respectfully request the Chair to inquire of the Minister, who is here present, whether he is responsible for the service to which Deputy Corry now refers.
My Vote is covering the whole lot at the present time.
I can quite understand Deputy Dillon's anxiety to have this matter postponed and not to have it discussed here. I can quite understand why he is objecting to having this matter discussed but I hold that I am entitled to discuss every item on this Vote. That is all I am doing.
That is a test of endurance, is it not?
Within the past year's administration.
During the past year I have received, practically every week, appeals and complaints from bakers in my constituency in regard to the manner in which they were being driven out of business as a result of the activities of the Minister for Agriculture, who took from the Minister for Industry and Commerce and arrogated to himself this particular branch. He knew that the people who needed extra bread were the poorer sections of our people and the depressed classes in agriculture, and yet he came along with a black market tax of 10½d. a stone on that flour. That action was contemptible and unjust. When our new Minister for Agriculture is concluding, I hope that he will be able to inform the House that that black market tax is coming off, together with the black market tax on sugar. It is wrong for any Government to put a special tax on food needed by the ordinary worker in this country. The ordinary worker in this country cannot live on the ordinary bread ration. We know what happened to our rural bakeries. Gradually, one after another, if they were in the vicinity of a large town or city, their customers were whipped from them. The rural bakeries have been wiped out as a result of the late Minister's manoeuvre. Everybody knows that city dwellers do not consume the full ration of bread. There is a large quantity of spare bread, over the ration, in the cities. City bakeries rush outside the city areas with the bread which they have left over——
On a point of order. The Minister for Agriculture has never had responsibility for the rationing of bread. He has not that responsibility now and he never had it.
The late Minister for Agriculture—with the emphasis on the word "late"—was the gentleman who sent the inspectors to the bakeries to inspect the ration cards and the quantity of flour supplied so as to ensure that not one ounce over the ration would be supplied. That is the matter I am dealing with.
I can only repeat that the Minister for Agriculture has never had any function in regard to the rationing of bread.
The Deputy seems to be worried, and gravely worried, because this matter has been handed back, probably, to the place which it should never have left and which it would not have left were it not for the vindictiveness of the Deputy, the late Minister, who wanted to get one up on the bakeries and, incidentally, to rake in revenue by a kind of black market tax. I should not have raised this matter at all except for my anxiety to have this black market tax wiped out immediately.
The Deputy has said that several times already.
I am also anxious that, now that we have a new Minister for Agriculture, we shall have a definite policy as regards essentials in this country—essential foodstuffs, in particular. I notice that in to-day's public Press, particularly in the Irish Independent, there are statements which are not true—particularly statements in connection with the price of imported butter which, they say, is in the region of 360/-. If they will get their own journal, which I quoted here last night, and consult it they will find that the price given by creamery managers for imported butter is from 450/- to 550/-per cwt. That would allow for a price to the Irish farmer of 1/6 a gallon for milk. I only wish that the Press might have an opportunity of correcting that.
I realise the difficult position in which the Minister is. I also realise the hard work that is before him. I want to know now what the Minister's attitude is towards milk production in this country. I want to have his policy with regard to milk production declared. I want an end put to a policy under which the ratepayers and taxpayers are required to pay in rates and taxes for beef bulls which have no useful function except for the production of beef. Nobody can say that those beef bulls are kept for the improvement of any herd, that is, a permanent improvement. If premiums are given in respect of Hereford, Polled Angus and beef Shorthorn bulls, I would like to know what justification there is for refusing premiums to purely dairy herds and dairy bulls. After all, these latter are required for milk production, but the State, through the Department of Agriculture, says that there shall be no premium. There is a decided advantage in getting a premium bull of the type I have mentioned, because by so doing you will improve the milk production of the herds. Yet the State, using public money, gives premiums out on Aberdeen Angus, Hereford and beef Shorthorn bulls which cannot make any permanent improvement on the live stock of this country because they are only bred for export or for beef.
I cannot see any justification for the continuance of that policy. This is one of the matters which the Minister for Agriculture will have to consider seriously. At times I smile when I hear Deputy Dillon talk about increasing the yield of cows to 560 and 750 gallons per cow. Deputy Dillon was going to increase the yield of cows, but how did he propose doing so? Was it by giving premiums for Hereford bulls and by pursuing a policy of inducement to the Irish farmer to turn to beef? I gave one instance of this yesterday evening which any Deputy travelling from Cork could see for himself. By looking out of the carriage window, he would see a herd of cows in the fields, every one of which had two calves. There was no one to milk them. This is just an example of Texas ranching.
I am one Deputy who has not seen that.
I will have great pleasure in waking up the Deputy from his happy slumbers on the way home to Cork to show him.
What county are you talking about—Kilkenny? Kilkenny is the Minister's county.
I want the Minister's definite policy in regard to that matter, if possible, now, but if not, as soon as may be. I think this House and the people of this country are entitled to know what is the policy of the Department of Agriculture in regard to milk production.
I had the pleasure of listening to a very distinguished gentleman from the Department who spoke last week on the question of artificial insemination. He stated that, although the insemination station had been set up and was working, the demand was not for dairy bulls but for Hereford bulls. That was the statement made by a learned doctor who came down last week to give a lecture on artificial insemination to the County Cork Committee of Agriculture. If that is the manner in which the people's money is being spent, the people are entitled to an explanation. There is no use in any Party coming here mouthing, with glib tongues, about the improvement in milk production if subsequently it pursues a policy of the kind I have referred to. There is no justification for it. If we want a cow that will yield from 500 to 700 gallons we have got to change our attitude. The Department of Agriculture must definitely change its attitude. There is no good pretending otherwise. I want a definite reason from the Department of Agriculture why premiums are given for Hereford bulls and refused for dairy bulls. If that is the policy of the Department of Agriculture, let it be stated in this House and then let us fix a price for milk on the basis of a 200-gallon cow.
The Minister decides the policy, not the Department.
It looks like it over the past three years all right. I admit all that. I do not think any Party could be responsible for the daft——
The Minister is responsible to this House for the policy of administration.
I think I am entitled to mention what I consider should be the policy. I want the Minister to tell us to-day, if possible, whether that policy will be adopted and if not the reason why. If that policy is not adopted, I want the price of milk to be fixed on the basis of a 200 gallon cow.
A 200-gallon cow? Are you down to that?
You are very nearly down to that. You have almost reached 100 gallons per cow during the past three years, owing to the activities of the previous Minister for Agriculture. Deputy Hickey is living in a city. He has removed himself completely from the old happy days when I knew him in Mourne Abbey.
That is what you think
Deputy Hickey has removed himself altogether and he is now a city man. I want to warn the Minister that there is a clear belief among the agricultural community engaged in dairying that there is a definite bias against them in this respect, that dairying is the one branch of agriculture in which they can never get a decent price. That belief has been driven in by the action of Deputy Dillon in the past three years. There was some hope in previous years because you went to a Minister, put up a case and got something anyway. I want the Minister to endeavour to disabuse—and he will have a difficult job in this respect—the minds of the dairy farmers of the idea that this is the one branch of agriculture in relation to which any endeavour to bring the price up to the cost of production, plus a fair profit, is going to be opposed tooth and nail.
That belief is prevalent and it has led to our present unfortunate position as regards butter and as regards milk supplies in certain towns. The farmer to-day is not a man who will plod away year after year on the same old line. When he finds that some product does not pay, he cuts it out. When he finds that it does not pay him to milk cows and send the milk to the creamery at 1/2 per gallon, he goes to the nearest fair or market and buys 15 or 20 calves, drives them in among the cows, letting the cows rear them and lets those people who opposed his getting a fair price for milk go to Denmark and New Zealand and pay 4/- per lb. for their butter.
That the seventh time.
I hope that Deputies who speak after me in this debate, and particularly a Deputy like Deputy Dunne, who represents or pretends to represent rural workers, will have interest enough——
What Deputy Dunne does, will do or will not do does not arise.
I am anxious to ensure that Deputies representing rural areas will support my request to the Minister for the removal of the black market tax imposed by his predecessor on white flour. We want fair play in these matters and I can quite understand the ex-Minister's anxiety. I have one pleasure and one pride——
The Deputy has said that to my own knowledge five or six times.
I will not say it again. It is like pouring water on a drowned rat and there is no good in doing that.
For the record, Deputy Corry stated that the price paid for imported butter was 480/-. At column 1268, Volume 125(9) of the Official Reports, Deputy P. O'Reilly asked the Taoiseach for particulars of the quantities and prices of butter imported and Deputies can see there the Taoiseach's reply. He said:—
"The total quantity of butter imported from the 1st November, 1950, to the 31st March, 1951, was 60,198 cwt. Of this, 20,017 cwt. originated in Denmark and 40,181 cwt. originated in New Zealand. The average c.i.f. prices paid per cwt. were £18 14s. 6d. and £18 16s. 0d. respectively."
I mention that fact merely to show what a contemptible pest Deputy Corry is.
I do not think that expression should be used.
Very well; I withdraw it. I mention it to show what a contemptibly unreliable person Deputy Corry is; how the time of this House is wasted in listening to his fantastic misrepresentations; and for the purpose of returning to it later when I have dealt with some other matters which call for examination.
I felicitate the Minister on his appointment to the most important position in the Irish Government, after that of the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste. I hope his efforts for the agricultural community will meet with success. I fully appreciate the magnitude of the burden he has undertaken, and, no matter who he might be, there can be no question that he is entitled to the forbearance of this House, certainly until the autumn, while he masters the complexities of a very large Department and anyone who seeks to take advantage of him by proposing trick questions in the initial stages of his tenure of office really exposes himself as being unfamiliar with the nature and magnitude of the task which it is the Minister's duty to discharge. I hope I shall not be guilty of any such unworthy folly as attempting to make inquiries of the Minister which no Minister after two or three weeks in the Department could conceivably be in a position to answer off-hand in the House; but there are some queries which I think it proper to raise.
I noted with amusement my predecessor, Deputy Smith, being cast overboard by Deputy Lemass when he went to Tipperary during the general election and I waited to see if there was going to be any reaction. I discovered that there was not going to be. Deputy Smith kept very silent and bowed his neck most dutifully to the yoke laid upon it. Then the leader of the Opposition, now the Taoiseach, went to Castlecomer and brought Deputy T. Walsh with him. Deputy T. Walsh was required to make a speech in his presence and the theme of that speech was: "I never advocated compulsory tillage. I am not in favour of compulsory tillage. What I said in Dáil Éireann was that if Deputy Dillon, the Minister for Agriculture, did not exercise greater diligence and prudence, he might create a situation in which the only means of producing food in Ireland would be compulsory tillage." That was Deputy T. Walsh in the presence of his own leader, seeking the suffrage of his own neighbours.
I ask the House to have reference to column 1097 of Volume 125 of the Official Debates. Deputy T. Walsh was addressing the House and Deputy Davin asked him: "What does Deputy Walsh want? Compulsory tillage?" Then:
"Mr. Donnellan: We do not know yet.
Mr. Davin: He is silent on that."
Then Deputy Walsh broke his silence:
"Mr. T. Walsh: I am not silent. Yes, compulsory tillage for this country."
Now I will ask the House to turn to column 1132. Deputy Walsh adjourned the debate on the first occasion and when it was resumed the following day he was asked to open it. He began by accusing me of high treason and, having been told by the Leas-Cheann Comhairle that that was going a bit far, Deputy Walsh said: "Very well."
Then:
"Mr. Davin: He is doing it for publicity, of course."
This fired Deputy Walsh:
"Mr. Walsh: I mentioned last night, in reply to Deputy Davin— the admission was not forced from me, because it is my own personal belief—that we should have compulsory tillage in this country."
I think public life sinks to a very low level indeed——
And Deputy Dillon has brought it to a very low level.
——when a Deputy puts his personal convictions on record in Dáil Éireann in the first week of May on a matter which is one of acute difference in the national election campaign and suffers himself to be dragged down to a platform in the middle of his own neighbourhood, not for the purpose of saying to his neighbours: "I have changed my mind; certain factors have been brought to my attention which I had not thought of before and I now desire to tell you before you go to the polls that my statement in Dáil Éireann was founded on insufficient knowledge; with the additional information I now have I have changed my mind, and I ask for your votes in consideration thereof." He was not asked to do that, but he was made to come down and get up in the presence of his neighbours and say: "I never said that; I never said I was in favour of compulsory tillage."
I think the Minister for Agriculture —Deputy Walsh, as he then was— should be ashamed of allowing anybody to drag him before his neighbours for the purpose of misleading them as to what he himself had said when representing them in Dáil Éireann. So long as Deputy Walsh is in public life he will find people will look askance at him for having allowed anybody to force him into that deplorable strategy. When we come to Dáil Éireann and find that the man who has been so humiliated before his own neighbours is appointed Minister for Agriculture, we cannot divorce from our minds the horrible suspicion that the price of his promotion was that he should seriously tarnish his personal honour in the presence of those amongst whom he was born and reared. It reflects no credit on the Deputy; it reflects no credit on the Head of the Government; and it is something of which Dáil Éireann is entitled to have an explanation. Either Deputy Walsh misled Dáil Éireann when he spoke here on that subject or he misled his constituents—what is worse, his own neighbours—when he spoke in Castlecomer. I do not think our people can be expected to overlook a transaction of that kind.
A week ago, the Minister for Agriculture was asked what his attitude was on milk prices. He said the matter was under consideration and he hoped to be in a position to deal with it in about six weeks' time.
I do not think I mentioned six weeks. Would the Deputy please quote that statement?
I thought that was what the Minister said.
Mr. Walsh
No.
We were told by the Tánaiste, when he was asked why the Estimate for Agriculture did not appear on the Order Paper last week, that it had been postponed to the end of the Estimates because the Department had a new Minister—a very reasonable explanation. Then an interesting and significant thing happened: the Agricultural Estimate was produced for this week and there was an announcement that the price of creamery milk would be increased to 1/4 in the summer and 1/6 in the winter. It is interesting for this reason, that it is evidence of the fact— which I mentioned during the general election and which is amply confirmed by what has transpired since then— that the Fianna Fáil Party is breaking up. Fianna Fáil has broken in Cork; it has broken in Dublin; and I understand that there is blue murder in Limerick; and the discipline of the Party is breaking up in this House. Every Deputy here remembers the time when every member of the Fianna Fáil Party jumped like a jack rabbit——
On a point of order, a Chinn Chomhairle, is this a discussion on the Fianna Fáil Party or organisation or one on the Estimate for Agriculture?
I have already indicated to Deputy Dillon that whatever happens to the Fianna Fáil Party is not relevant to this Estimate.
My submission to the Chair is that the ground for the new policy in regard to creamery milk is not related, as it should be, to the economics in agriculture but to the inspiration supplied to Deputy Burke by the Balbriggan widow. Every Fianna Fáil Deputy is simply besieging the unfortunate Minister for Agriculture. The decision to wait, to reflect, to inquire, goes by the board.
On a point of order again, Sir, on a point of personal explanation——
I will not give way on that.
On a point of order, Deputy Dillon by implication over some period—I had reason here in this House——
That is not a point of order.
I am entitled to this. I have been slandered.
Deputy Burke will resume his seat please. What he is raising is not a point of order. Will Deputy Burke resume his seat?
Deputy Burke does not know the rules of the House.
Apparently I do as well as you do.
Deputy Burke is not raising a point of order. He is not obeying the Chair. The point he is pursuing is not an orderly or a regular one. He will have to revert to the Estimates.
I indicated to the House —and I submit that it is strictly relevant—that the circumstances surrounding the announcement made yesterday were indicative of the fact that Government policy with regard to milk is dictated not by the considerations which should govern such decisions but by the crudest evidence of irrelevant political pressure.
We cannot discuss that.
Surely we can discuss the reason for the increase in the price of milk.
We cannot discuss the alleged break up of a Party or alleged indiscipline in a Party. They are not relevant.
What caused the increase in the price of milk announced yesterday?——
The Deputy may say it but he may not discuss it.
——Political pressure. I will submit——
Have you nothing constructive to say?
Who in the Name of God is this fellow? Who are you? Where did you come from?
This conversation across the flour is not relevant. Deputy Dillon will proceed on the Estimate.
Provided that he is not interrupted by every newcomer brought into this House in the last 24 hours. The Fianna Fáil Party has forced on an inexperienced Minister——
He is not on the far side of the House which is a great charity.
——and on the Minister for Finance, egged on by the spoilt five of Irish politics, a policy in respect of creamery milk which, I will submit to the House, taking the long view will inflict dreadful injuries on the fundamental industry of this country.
I now return to a subject to which I have already directed the attention of the House, that is, the price payable for butter on the international markets of the world. In the circumstances under which we had to buy butter last autumn those who sold it to us made no secret of the fact that they were asking a higher price than they got from any regular customer because they did not believe that we were going to be a regular customer for butter. Therefore, they were going to get from us the maximum price that they thought the trade would carry and in one case in the course of bargaining they stated quite frankly that they aimed to get from us for the parcel of butter which they proposed to sell us a price which would in some measure compensate for selling the rest of their butter at the best price they could get in the normal butter export markets of the world. On that basis and in those circumstances of scarcity the export price of butter fluctuated between 380/- and 360/- per cwt. The economic price of butter manufactured from creamery milk at 1/4 per gallon in summer and 1/6 in winter is 440/- per cwt. and if we ever produce more butter than our own people require for consumption and we have to resume butter exports the difference between 440/- per cwt. and the current price of butter in the world market which is about 280/- will have to be found somewhere.
Where is that price paid?
That is about the current average price for butter exports to the butter manufacturing countries which are exporting butter at the present time. New Zealand and Denmark, put it at 300/-. If they sell a parcel to somebody who wants it badly enough they clap on the price as much as they can, but for the long term contracts under which the bulk of the butter is sold that is about the average price. Put it at 300/-, and it means that if we ever succeed in producing surplus butter for export over and above what our own people are prepared to consume we will have to pay £7 per cwt. to whatever customer buys it to eat our butter.
To enable the foreigners to eat it.
I want to remind the House of something. Last year, 1950, we sent 222,000,000 gallons of milk to the creameries of this country. The last time we came anywhere near that was in 1934, 1935, 1936 and 1937. Let me remind the House of what happened in those years: in 1950 we produced in Ireland out of that 222,000,000 gallons of milk approximately 700,000 cwt. of butter, every ounce of which was effectively consumed and paid for by our own people.
The proper thing to be done.
Certainly, but the reason they were able to do it was that they had the earning and the purchasing power. In 1934, however, we produced about 800,000 cwt. of butter, and our people were able to consume only 350,000 cwt.
We paid ourselves for eating it.
We shipped to Great Britain 453,000 cwt., more than half. For each cwt. of butter which we shipped to Great Britain in that year the British put down 52/10 and the Fianna Fail Government put down in subsidy and export bounty 82/10 of the Irish taxpayers' money. The British ate the butter and the Irish got the empty boxes.
That is what you call sound economics.
In 1935 we shipped 473,000 cwt. of butter to Great Britain. The British put down 65/9 and the Fianna Fail Government put down 44/-of the Irish taxpayers' money and again the British ate the butter and we got the empty boxes. But remember, if we had to export butter tomorrow on the basis of the price fixed, not by the Minister for Agriculture but by the Fianna Fail Party and the five legs they have behind them——
The five that put you over there.
——we should have to put down £7 per cwt. to induce them to buy it, not £4 2s. 10d. as in 1934, but £7. What does that imply? It implies that, in effect, we have put a ceiling on the quantity of butter that the Irish creamery industry is going to be allowed to produce, because it is manifest that this Parliament or no other Parliament will long tolerate an arrangement whereunder we have to pay £7 a cwt. on every cwt. exported. I want to say to the dairy farmers of this country that if there is an axiom in trade and industry it is this —no business can ever stand still; it either goes forward or it goes back. You cannot say to any expanding industry: "Up to that point you can expand and then stop," because the moment you do that the industry does not stop, it begins to go back. Therefore the net effect of yesterday's announcement is to say to the dairy industry: "You may produce such butter as is wanted in this country and in respect of that you can levy on the Exchequer and on the consumer, but you are finally and irrevocably out of the export market."
One of my predecessors as Minister for Agriculture (Deputy Dr. Ryan) deliberately stated in Cork University four or five years ago that he believed we were out of the export market. Deputy Dr. Ryan stated that when Minister for Agriculture and warned the public that his judgment of the future was that we were out of the butter export market for evermore and the decision taken by the Fianna Fáil Party yesterday confirms that view. They have simply thrown in their hand and announced that they have abandoned all hope of ever building up the dairying industry into an industry capable of limitless expansion, without which the economic life of this country cannot go on.
If we have made up our minds that agricultural exports are to be virtually abandoned and that the primary function of our agricultural industry is self-sufficiency, remember this, the day that decision is taken we start our people on the road to a low, miserable standard of living analogous to that enjoyed by the agricultural communities of eastern European countries. We in this country enjoy a relatively high standard of living because we are an exporting country, and we are an exporting country because we are peculiarly situated and have the advantage of being able to put into the British market perishable agricultural produce in fresh condition which they can get from nowhere else in the world. I say advisedly that a large part of that perishable agricultural produce is in the form of meat and fowl and the by-products thereof which they cannot get from the Antipodes in fresh condition because it will not come in fresh condition except at an appalling price, and which they cannot get from the Continent of Europe for veterinary reasons which do not apply to this country, because these two countries of Great Britain on the one hand and Ireland on the other have always had a common veterinary practice which made it possible for us to exclude certain of the continental veterinary diseases from these territories and which enables us to ship these commodities to Great Britain which Great Britain is afraid to import from continental sources of supply.
If we, by our price policy, turn our backs on the market and price ourselves out of it deliberately, we are going to travel the same accursed road we travelled from 1932 to 1947. Remember, that in 1948, when I became Minister for Agriculture, there never were fewer cattle, there never were fewer pigs, there were never fewer sheep in Ireland and the state of the agricultural land in Ireland had reached a depth of degradation and impoverishment unknown since the famine year of 1847.
If the Deputy had his way there would be fewer people also.
Within three years of that date we are in a position to say to-day that for the first time for a century the human population of this country is going up and that on the 1st June this year there were a greater number of cattle, and I believe a greater number of cows and in-calf heifers than we ever had before. The pig population is going up and the sheep population is going up. The output of the agricultural industry is going up and the state of fertility of the land is steadily improving. Self-sufficiency, founded on the doctrine that it is safe and sensible to price ourselves out of our export markets, is as certain as we are here to-day to initiate a cycle which will bring us back exactly to the same position in which we were in 1947, and that is where this political policy—for it is not an agricultural policy; it is not an economic policy; it is a political policy—is heading the agricultural industry at the present time.
I do not speak of the sorry madness of any Government which injects into our economy at the present time £2,500,000 of extra spending money without increasing production by an ounce, but I pause to think of this—this change announced yesterday is going to cost our people, the consumer and the taxpayer, £1,400,000. Now, it is not going to produce one gallon extra milk on the basis of that outlay. Pause and think what is being done. If the milk yield of each cow supplying milk to a creamery had been increased by one pint a day, the farmers would have got more out of it than this increase of 1d. in summer and 2d. in winter. What might the Minister for Agriculture not have done if he had secured from the Government £1,000,000 a year to spend on veterinary services and live stock improvement? What could I have done if I could have got even £100,000? How much might the average milk yield of our cattle have been increased if we had £1,000,000 a year to spend on veterinary services and live stock improvement?
So money is the master, as it is in everything else?
No.
That statement conveys that.
No, Deputy. I would have got what I wanted if I had been there. I did not do so badly.
I am not saying that. You say that if we had another £1,000,000 you could do so much better. This country is worth more than another £1,000,000.
You remember my saying just before I left Office that there is only one thing in this country of which we appear to have too much, and that is money. There is no desirable developmental step necessary to be taken which will be long arrested for the want of money.
I am glad you qualified it in that way.
But look at what we are doing now—pouring down the drain of inflation £1,400,000 worth of money, annually, which, if it had been used to increase the yield of cows would have got for the farmers far more than this sum of money but, infinitely more important, would have built up the industry to a higher average milk yield so that we could face the foreign market and say to our own dairy farmers: "The sky is the limit. The more you produce of dairy produce the better for the country." But, do not forget that out of every 100 gallons of milk that go to the creamery for the production of butter there is a by-product of 80 gallons of skim milk wherewith to feed pigs which every farmer in Ireland knows cannot fall below 220/- per cwt. for the next five years and which are at present making £13 per cwt. and every pig of which could be bred, reared and finished on that skim milk, barley, potatoes, oats and fodder beet, every ounce of which could be grown on our own land.
All that development is possible yet, of course, if only we had control——
Deputy Hickey ought not indulge in a running commentary on Deputy Dillon's speech.
Sorry.
I think Deputy Hickey is overlooking the fact that if we price ourselves out of our foreign markets there is no use producing butter if no one will buy it, there is no use producing pigs at a price which no one is prepared to pay.
I am conscious of all that.
That is what the Fianna Fáil Party are embarking on doing, because they are blinded by the crazy political stunt of self-sufficiency. It is the schizophrenia of politics and economics. The schizophrenic is the kind of lunatic who first does not recognise his friends, who next refuses to leave the house, who lastly retires to his bedroom and is ultimately found in bed under the clothes and will not come out because that is the one place where nobody can get at him and he thinks he has at last found security and then they put him in Grangegorman. The Fianna Fáil economist first wants to produce everything at home; his next state is that he does not want to produce anything except what is used at home; the next state is that he does not want anything produced in the parish except what is going to be consumed in the parish and the next thing is that no farmer ought produce anything except what he will eat himself. Finally, you find him sitting by the kitchen fire with one flower pot and one oat growing in it, triumphant that at last he has reached the very essence and apotheosis of economic self-sufficiency for the agricultural community a la de Valera for out of this solitary oat he can produce oatmeal, oaten bread and light beer with which to wash them down.
That is economic schizophrenia and that is the ultimate end of the economic madness of pricing yourself out of your own export markets. The final destiny of an agricultural community which turns its back on its own natural markets, having no other resources, as we are in Ireland, is to be found sitting by the kitchen fire of turf, in pampooties, with a sheepskin tied around his middle, brooding on one oat growing in a four-inch flower pot—and that is the real economic goal of Fianna Fáil.
I am quite sure it is not progress anyway.
That is why I say that it is not agricultural policy, it is not economics, that dictated yesterday's decision. It is the panicky politics of a disrupted political Party tossed on a stormy sea of politics with no more substantial life-belt than Deputy Cogan and Deputy Dr. ffrench O'Carroll.
The policy of the inter-Party Government was and continues to be to raise the average yield of our cattle from 365 gallons per cow ultimately to an average somewhere between 400 and 800 gallons, fully conscious of the fact that to arrive at anything like an 800 gallon average was a very long term policy, but that to arrive at a 500-gallon average was a reasonable objective. The plain truth is this, that the attempt to build an economic dairy industry on the 365-gallon cow is as daft as trying to get a tractor to fly or an aeroplane to plough. It cannot be done.
The minimum milk yield upon which an economic dairy industry can be operated in this country is 450 gallons, and it ought to be, if the farmers are enjoying the standard of living to which they are entitled, about 600 gallons. We could do that if we went the right way about it, but it is certainly not the right way about it to set a standard for creamery milk prices which gives a man with a 350-gallon cow a miserable peasant standard of living, which is a standing temptation not to make the extra effort to attain a proper average milk yield, which would bring with it a proper standard of living to every dairy farmer in this country.
It is true that with a 350-gallon cow, at present milk prices, any farmer can stagger along. If that is to be the destiny of the agricultural community of this country, just to stagger along in inefficient and sordid penury, my advice to any enterprising young man in this country would be to leave the land like a scalded cat. But it ought not to be the destiny of agriculture in this country. The agricultural community ought to be the people who count in this country. They never will be rich, and no one but a liar will hold out to them the prospect that any economic policy operated by any Government will make the farmers, or anybody else in this country who is honest, rich; but it is eminently possible to make them prosperous, secure, and dignified as independent farmers on their own holdings, earning their own living, and beholden to nobody.
I wonder is that the purpose of Fianna Fáil, or do they desire to reduce the farmers of this country to the same disgusting condition of dependency that I found them in three years ago? Is it the policy of Fianna Fáil to restore the situation, in which Fianna Fáil made the claim, as of right, to break down the farmer's gate and to break down his fences, and to send ten fields of inspectors in to flog him into the proper user of his land? That was the policy of Fianna Fáil in 1947 after 16 years of their administration. After three years of the inter-Party administration, the farmers of this country compelled them to recant on the public platform. Why? Because they were so circumstanced that they were beholden to nobody for their right to live; they were independent, they were prosperous, and they had not to beg the right to live in their own country or on their own holdings from any Fianna Fáil T.D. The cities put Fianna Fáil back with the help of the seedy five. If Fianna Fáil intends to restore its right to do as it thinks best with the gates and fences of the farmers, an essential preliminary to that is to make them dependent again. I do not think they will succeed. I think this seedy conspiracy will break up before it can get the chains on the farmers of this country just as the Cork Corporation caucus broke up, and just as Deputy Alderman Butler broke out of the compound and is now a maverick on the political prairies of Ireland. I hope the disintegration of the scrubby political conspiracy known as Fianna Fáil will continue, and that we will be able to sweep it out of the public life of this country before it gets the chance of bringing our farmers to the depths of degradation in which I found them three short years ago.
Deputies in this House may not realise the significance of a transfer of one-fifth of the Department of Agriculture to the Department of Industry and Commerce within a week of this Government coming into office. When I left the Department of Agriculture it was organised in five divisions, one of which dealt with cereals and feeding stuffs. Why was that division transferred from the Department of Industry and Commerce to the Department of Agriculture by the inter-Party Government? Because Deputy Morrissey and I agreed that feeding stuffs were the raw material of the agricultural industry and that bread grains were the product of the agricultural industry, and he wanted me to be in a position to watch over these things, not from the point of view of the Department of Industry and Commerce, which was the protector of industry, of the millers and traders, but from the point of view of the farmers whose raw materials these things were.
The millers did not like it and the traders did not like it because, whenever prices relating to cereals or cereal products fell to be determined they were determined from the point of view of the agricultural community. They will not be so determined any more. They will be determined from the point of view of the mill, the miller, the merchant and the middleman, and that is why they are being transferred back to Kildare Street. It makes me apprehensive not that the new Minister for Agriculture cannot answer every query that is addressed to him with the facility that the Minister for Industry and Commerce can answer queries addressed to his Department. It did not matter who was made Minister for Agriculture, if he was a new Minister, he could not have that facility. No industry could give it to him without a period in which he could familiarise himself with the work. There were whole segments taken into the Department of Agriculture for a reason—because there were powerful vested interests waging war on the agricultural industry of this country and because it was necessary that the Minister for Agriculture should be the final authority as to what the price of Indian meal should be, what the price of pollard should be, what the price of bran should be, what the price for wheat should be and what the conditions should be with which the farmer would have to comply when he delivered his wheat into the mill and that these conditions would be laid down to meet the requirements of the farmers and not of the millers. That is why it was transferred to the Department of Agriculture. Does this House blame me if I note with apprehension that, within one short week of the new Government being formed, responsibility for these matter has been transferred to the Minister for Industry and Commerce?
No matter how inexperienced the new Minister for Agriculture naturally may be in the problems of administration, he should not have let that happen. He was entitled to demand that a decision on that matter should be at least suspended until he had time to examine it and to determine for himself as to whether or not he was prepared to concede the propriety of that procedure. He ought to have known from his own knowledge of the work of that Department that no sane Minister for Agriculture would draw into that Department any more work merely for the fun of having it there. He ought to have known that there must have been a reason for the change that was made. He ought not to have started selling the pass in the first seven days of his occupancy in office. I exhort him even now to stick his heels into the ground and to at least insist on time in which to review proposals of that kind before he hands his whole Department away to the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the three caballeros who have been attached to his person.
I want to ask the Minister now certain specific questions. I asked him yesterday if the rock removal programme in Connemara had been initiated and he thought it proper to sneer and to say: "Yes, on six acres." I am proud of that. We started out on the 1st June on a completely new departure that no one had ever attempted before and that every Fianna Fáil Deputy from Galway said could not be done. Is there any reason to hang our heads because in the first three weeks of June we cleared six acres of rocks from the land in Connemara? If it added one acre to each of six farms in Connemara in three weeks was it not worth doing?
I remember when I first adumbrated this plan at the Galway County Committee of Agriculture I said to that committee:—
"I know that anyone who attempts anything in Connemara will expose himself to ridicule, to insult and to misrepresentation but I think this is worth trying even if it should have that effect."
I know that to ask men to take machinery down to Connemara of a kind unprecedented and of which no one had ever dreamt and to bring it to bear on the special problem of that part of the country was bound to evoke obscurantist ridicule and derision. I do not think it ever would have been done had I not started it in the middle of the general election.
Remember, there was no advantage in starting it then. It could not produce results. It was bound to excite derision and lead to misguided people talking about pushing Slyne Head into the sea. What it did produce was six modest acres of land cleared in Connemara, land which was rock-strewn and useless heretofore. I wonder will the Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy Bartlcy from Clifden, speak so slightingly of that modest programme now that he has become charged under Deputy Lynch, in collaboration with somebody else, as a triumvirate to woo back with public funds to the shattered ranks of Fianna Fáil the western seaboard of Ireland.
I would like the Minister to tell us does he propose to wind up the Connemara division of the land project scheme? I want to go on record as saying that I am proud of the work, microscopic as it yet is, that has been done in Connemara and grateful to the pioneering officers of my Department, as it then was, who faced the possibility of failure and the certainty of ridicule in making the attempt. I am proud of the success that attended their efforts in helping that section of our people whom heretofore it was found much easier to provide with doles and pensions as if they were unwanted poor relations but which the inter-Party Government felt were entitled to expect from their own Government such facilities as would enable them to live in dignity and decency in their own homes.
It is a gratifying tribute that the new Government should think it necessary to provide three Parliamentary Secretaries and a Minister to undertake the programme of work which I, all inadequately, was struggling to perform all alone. If numbers bespeak success, the Department of Agriculture ought to be a tornado during the next 12 months. I sincerely trust it will not be a repetition of the oft-told tale of two many cooks spoiling the broth. I urge on the Minister to remember that, in the last analysis, no matter how many Sancho Panzas there may be he should be the Don Quixote of that Department, not afraid even to tilt at windmills or, in the poetic and prophetic words of his leader, to dream dreams and to achieve performance.
I would like to know from the Minister what he is going to do about the land project. Is it going to be abandoned? I believe he was quite flattering at Carlow, and said that he was lost in admiration of the work he had seen it do in his native county.
Perhaps he would also tell us what provision he has made, or intends to make, for fertilisers in the autumn of this year and in the spring of the year to come. Now is the time to look to this matter. If our farmers are left to the tender mercies of the Fertiliser Trust in this country, aided and abetted by the Department of Industry and Commerce, God help the farmers. I imported 89,000 tons of superphosphates this year as Minister for Agriculture, of which I left approximately 48,000 tons in store for my successor's disposal. I would be interested to know what proposals he has in mind for the provision of adequate supplies of ground North African phosphates for farmers this autumn for application to grassland and what provision he proposes to make in respect of superphosphates for the spring tillage crops. I would exhort him not to allow himself to be dominated in the decisions which he will have to make in regard to this matter by the Fertiliser Trust in this country, than which there is no more irresponsible combination in operation anywhere in Europe.
Further, I would be glad to know if and when the Minister intends to inaugurate the parish plan. I think he will find in the Department a request from the committees of agriculture of South Tipperary, Westmeath and Longford. He will also find, I think, that there are 27 parish agents in the process of appointment for the servicing of that scheme.
I would like him to tell me if the ware potato growers who delivered potatoes to the alcohol factories to the order of the Potato Marketing Board have yet been informed of the amount of the bonus which they are to receive at the end of the season. My recollection is that they receive a basic price of £4 a ton and that it was hoped to be able to pay them a bonus of from £2 to £2 10s. per ton at the end of the season. I would be grateful if the Minister, at his convenience, would indicate to the House on what basis that bonus will be payable.
I do hope the Minister's term of office will be attended by success. I do say to Deputies on every side of this House that, when debating with the Minister for Agriculture, they have a duty wherever they sit to see in the Minister for Agriculture two distinct persons. One is the politician, which we all are and which we are all proud to be. In that rôle it is our right and duty to exchange the ordinary cut and thrust of politics. But he has a second rôle, and that is as the Minister who represents agriculture in this House. When the Minister for Industry and Commerce sits in that bench, those who are in this House purporting to represent industry, trade or business will always rush to his aid and support against anyone who challenges the interests of that body in our community. Wherever they sit in the House they are all prepared to join hands on the strictly business basis that they are all businessmen and he is their Minister.
I want to say to the farmers in this House, wherever they sit, so long as Deputy Walsh is Minister for Agriculture in this country, the farmers should bear this in mind, that if he has to spend, in the course of his duty, one half of his time appearing to fight farmers, far the most arduous portion of his life is spent fighting off the vested interests who perennially seek to batten on farmers. Even at the time of the hottest struggle with vested interests, supported by all the resources of finance and power, who are doing their best to break in on the agricultural community in order to rob it, it is not made easy for the Minister for Agriculture, who mans that gap alone, when he finds behind him the vocal elements in the agricultural community stoutly asserting that they repudiate him and condemn the measures that he seeks to take in their defence.
If the Minister for Agriculture hereafter finds himself engaged in that variety of struggle, I hope he will look confidently to me to give him all the help I can to defend the agricultural industry in this country against those who seek to exploit it, and that any previous or subsequent passage of arms in the normal field of politics should not induce him ever to believe that where he is deeply engaged in the service of protecting the agricultural community of this country he need ever apprehend that he will be stabbed in the back from this side of the House.
I see the office of Minister for Agriculture as a great adventure in which any man should be privileged to be allowed to engage. It is an adventure in which I wish my successor the best of good luck. I do not think he will think it amiss if I tell him now that I am shocked at the terms on which he took it, belying his own declaration here. I am shocked at the price he has, perhaps, been tricked into paying when he surrendered a vital fifth of his jurisdiction to a colleague whom the farmers of this country have no reason to trust.
I am dismayed by the evidence given yesterday of his apparent preparedness to allow politics, and not economics, to guide him in administering the agricultural policy of the new Government. Nevertheless, when he is fighting for the farmers against those who seek to rob them, I hope he will look to me, and to us on this side of the House, to help him but it is fair to tell him that if he follows the course of abdication, of repudiation of his own past and of surrender, abject surrender, to the pressure of any pressure group that threatens him with their power if he does not give in, he will get no sympathy on this side of the House and we shall do our best to remove him from the office he holds.
To the farmers of this country it is refreshing to know that the Department of Agriculture now rests in the hands and under the control of a farmer, of a man who is one of ourselves, who has come from the agricultural industry, from inside the agricultural industry, and not from outside. It is refreshing to know that we have a Minister for Agriculture to whom and with whom we can talk as a fellow farmer, with whom we can discuss our problems and difficulties. We are glad that the Department of Agriculture is now removed, I hope for ever, from the atmosphere of hysterics and high jinks, but to those who entertain ordinary human feelings of sympathy for a fellow Deputy, I think the outstanding feeling in regard to Deputy Dillon is one of sympathy. I know that he did look forward to being Minister for Agriculture for a long time and I know that he feels deeply disappointed that his term of office has been shortened, but I think that the ex-Minister for Agriculture, and certainly the Deputies of this House generally, will agree that the downfall of Deputy Dillon was his own handiwork and his own handiwork alone. He approached the farmers from, as it were, a high pedestal, looking down upon them as mere ignorant peasants upon whom he was conferring a tremendous blessing by stretching forth his hand to help them. I do not think that the new Minister for Agriculture will ever regard the farmers of the country in the same light. I think he will look upon them as his equals and that he will hope to be regarded by them as their equal. That is what the farmers expect and what they hope for. If the farmers band themselves together in a vocational organisation to defend their interests or to put forward their just claims, I am sure he will not describe that organisation as a political ramp designed to overthrow or embarrass him.
Deputy Dillon, in opening his speech, referred to the humiliation which he claimed the Minister had to suffer in changing his policy, as he alleged. I wonder did Deputy Dillon ever consider the humiliation which he himself had to suffer when, as Minister for Agriculture, he had to go before the people and appeal to the farmers of Ireland to grow more wheat? How these words must have stuck in his throat! They did stick in his throat, because it is clearly evident that he knew last winter that it was a matter of vital importance that the acreage of wheat should be increased but the then Minister for Agriculture could not bring himself to appeal to the farmers to grow more wheat until after the 1st April, long after the period in which, in the ordinary course of events, wheat should be in the ground. I think listening to the ex-Minister for Agriculture it has been brought home to every Deputy in this House that he suffered from a terrible obsession—perhaps it dates back to 1917 or 1918—an obsession and a hostility to the whole idea of national self-reliance as shown by his bitter denunciation of the policy of self-sufficiency. I think nobody in this country, certainly no leading member of the old Sinn Féin movement or any movement that succeeded it, ever advocated complete self-sufficiency for Ireland, but they did advocate, from the time of Arthur Griffith and long before his time, that there should be at least a sufficient measure of self-sufficiency in this country to make the country economically safe and economically sound That, I think, is all that has been advocated by progressive nationalists of this country. Yet the ex-Minister for Agriculture spurned that policy down through the years to such an extent that he built up a fallacious case against the growing of wheat and found all kinds of arguments to advance against it. To my own knowledge at a meeting in Carlow he publicly demanded that wheat growing should cease.
On another occasion he suggested that it would be a good thing if the sugar factories were blown up. To-day he seems to be reiterating that policy, a policy of depending upon foreign ships to bring to the people of this country the things we require from the furthest ends of the earth and of depending on ships to bring our surplus supplies to the furthest ends of the earth in exchange. He seems to base his whole policy in regard to agriculture on the shifting sands of a very unsettled international world situation. For the greater part of his speech to-day he bitterly attacked the Minister for Agriculture for having dared to give the farmers who produce milk a small increase in the price that they are receiving at the creameries. What is his case against the increase? His case is that it is possible that we may have a surplus of butter some time in the future, that the world price will be low and that we shall not be able, therefore, to compete in the world markets. On that unsubstantial case, he fights against giving the producer in this most important industry a very modest concession.
You will realise how modest is this concession when it is brought home to you that in the last week the wages of an agricultural worker were increased by 7/6 per week. That increase will amount, I think, to almost £20 a year and the increase in the price of milk will only be about three-fourths of it. Assuming that it takes one man to look after ten cows, the increase in the price of milk will not cover the total increase in wages.
There are people who will make the case that the farmers are blackmailing the rest of the community but in this matter of a better price for milk it is not the farmers who have the benefit. The entire benefit has gone to the agricultural worker. I do not see anything wrong with that. The agricultural worker is the human foundation upon which the agricultural industry must rest. I realise that while the benefit of the increase has gone to the agricultural worker in the case where the dairy farmer depends upon employed labour, in the same way it has gone to the farmer's family in the case of the many small farms where the work is done by family labour. I am not objecting to that but I think that there ought to be a sense of proportion in regard to this matter. We ought not allow ourselves to be fooled, as a lot of people have been fooled, by hysterical outbursts on half-baked economics which have guided the ex-Minister for Agriculture along his erratic course over the past 20 years.
It is satisfactory that the new Minister has agreed to the principle of a careful investigation of farmers' costings. The farmer is not seeking to rob the rest of the community. All he wants is justice and fair play. He is making an honest appeal for justice and he is not afraid of any impartial investigation into his costs of production. Nothing angered me more over the last three years than the repeated assertions of the then Minister for Agriculture that an investigation of the farmer's costings would show that he was making an excessive profit, and that he was refusing to give us an investigation into costings out of benevolence for the farmers of this country. He claimed that an investigation would expose the fact that farmers were making excessive profits. I never accepted that view and I do not think that the present Minister will accept it. I think that the new Minister will be prepared to tell the farmer that he is entitled to a fair price for his produce and, because he is entitled to a fair price, I think the Minister will agree to the setting up of an impartial investigation into the costs of production on an officially run farm. Nobody wants the man who is running his farm inefficiently to make a profit.
All we seek is to ensure that the man who is running his farm efficiently will make a reasonable profit. To run a dairy farm efficiently requires the application of a tremendous amount of industry and the exercise of a tremendous amount of skill. The man who runs a dairy farm efficiently is entitled, therefore, to get some little profit out of his business. It was also a source of anger to a great many farmers that the ex-Minister for Agriculture sought to misrepresent costings figures that were presented to him by Professor Murphy of University College, Cork. Professor Murphy found that milk production costs three or four years ago were 8½d. a gallon in the summer months and, I think, 1/6 a gallon in the winter months. The then Minister for Agriculture took the figure of 8½d. as being the cost of production of milk—on the assumption, apparently, that a cow would come down from Heaven on 1st May, give milk for the summer months and then be taken up to Heaven for the winter months. He ignored the fact that a cow milking in the summer months must be maintained over the whole year. In adopting that attitude the ex-Minister, though he knew he could not deceive the farmers, was hoping to deceive the urban population who, possibly, do not give careful consideration to these matters. It was a shame to misrepresent and misinterpret figures that were very conscientiously secured by Professor Murphy and by the people who cooperated with him in the carrying out of that costings investigation.
Having made a reasonable gesture to those who are engaged in the creamery industry, the Minister has also decided that another section of the dairying industry is not to be despised and trampled upon. He has decided that those who are engaged in producing country butter on their own farms are to receive fair and equitable treatment. Nobody could ever explain in this House or outside it why the man who produced butter efficiently through his co-operative society should have that commodity subsidised while the man who produced butter efficiently on his own farm did not receive a similar concession. I think it was due to the war which the ex-Minister for Agriculture waged upon the manufacture of farmers' butter that we had to import the malodorous commodity which we have been importing at a high price from the Continent and elsewhere. If the ex-Minister for Agriculture, instead of getting up in this House and giving us an exhibition of his abhorrence of farmers' butter— instead of denouncing farmers' butter in the way in which he denounced it— had sought to give the people who produce farmers' butter a fair price and a fair inducement to improve the quality of that butter, he would not have had to go running around the world seeking butter, as has been the case in the past few months. When he came into office he told us that there were stacks of farmers' butter that had had to be conveyed to the ports with the aid of the fire brigade men equipped with gas masks. Was that a reasonable way for a Minister for Agriculture to speak of an Irish agricultural product? Is it not the duty of a Minister for Agriculture in this country to fight for fair prices for the produce of the farmers of this country?
If anything goes wrong with a small quantity of that produce the matter should be disposed of without proclaiming to the world that it is of inferior quality. I think that this question is now being approached in a reasoned way by our present Minister for Agriculture. I think he will see that the quality of country butter is again improved. There is no doubt but that the quality of Irish country butter was much superior to what it is to-day. There was a great deal more attention given to production and marketing some years ago. That whole attitude towards country butter was completely destroyed by the previous Minister for Agriculture. I hope that with a better price a new approach will be made to this problem.
I hope that in the near future we will have the rural electrification scheme extended to almost all the country districts. With the aid of rural electrification, it will be possible to produce good butter on the farm in districts where the creamery service is not available.
There is another section of the dairying industry to which, I am sure, the Minister is directing his attention at the present time, and that is the section which caters for the supply of whole milk to our towns and cities. I understand that some weeks ago the Minister for Agriculture received a request to meet a deputation from the Dublin district milk producers. I am quite sure that the Minister will avail of the first opportunity to meet those people and discuss with them their particular problems and difficulties.
I am quite sure that, if the Minister meets the people engaged in milk production for Dublin, he will learn from them many interesting facts in regard to their difficulties and problems. I am quite sure that he will be able to reach a satisfactory agreement with them in regard to a fair system of fixing the prices for their produce. There is no doubt whatever but that the price of milk as paid to producers, particularly in the winter months, is altogether unsatisfactory. There is no doubt but that the price of milk, particularly during the month of April, is entirely unsatisfactory. It is entirely unsatisfactory, having regard to the high cost of feeding stuffs in practically every county during the month of April and more particularly in those counties which supply Dublin City. April is the most expensive month of the year in which to feed cows as everybody knows. Yet, over the past three or four years, the price of milk has been drastically reduced. A reasonable talk with the milk producers' representatives will convince the Minister that something ought to be done about the matter.
The ex-Minister for Agriculture pleaded for consideration and support for the present Minister when he is negotiating in regard to prices for our exportable surplus and when he is fighting in the farmers' interests. I think that everyone will agree that it is essential that the Minister should be backed up and supported to the fullest extent by all when he is making a fight for better prices for our exportable surplus of agricultural produce. Our whole economic life and our standard of living, to a great extent, depends upon our ability to secure good prices.
Notice taken that 20 Deputies were not present; House counted, and 20 Deputies being present,
As I was saying, the foundation of our whole economy depends upon our being able to produce, in the main, the things we require. In addition, of course, to what we can produce here, we will have to import a certain quantity of commodities but we hope that quantity will decrease as time goes on. In order to import those products we must export and our main product for export is our agricultural surplus. For that reason, we should support the Minister in his endeavours to get for us the best prices that can be obtained for our agricultural surplus.
I could not understand the attitude of the Minister's predecessor when he was actually engaged in negotiating with the British in regard to the price of eggs last year. He came into the House during the time those negotiations were in progress and announced that the offer the British had made of 2/- a dozen for eggs was a very good offer and the price a very good price for the Irish producer. That is not the way to do business with a foreign country. The price of 2/- a dozen for eggs represented a reduction of one-third the price which was paid when Deputy Dillon took office. I hope that in the future an entirely different attitude will be adopted in regard to the price obtained for any surplus we have to export. While Deputy Walsh, the Minister for Agriculture, may not be able to speak as eloquently or as flamboyantly to the British Ministers as Deputy Dillon, I hope he will keep a hard head. This would be much more effective. Wild words may get scare headlines in the newspapers. It is all very well to say, "We will drown you with eggs." That may get a better headline in the newspapers but it does not help to get better prices. I hope that, when the Minister goes to negotiate with the British Ministers, he will deal with them in the same way as a prudent, hard-headed farmer at a fair deals with those from whom he is seeking to buy.
Would you not go over with the Minister and keep him right?
He might take you with him.
You are one of the boys now. You can carry his bag.
I know, of course, that Deputy Davin and some of my friends on the left feel very uncomfortable by reason of being displaced from the positions which they held and——
We feel very comfortable.
——by being deprived of the advantages which came to them as a result of that privileged position. I suppose that in public life men have got to take what is coming to them, particularly when they know that they deserve it, not altogether of themselves in all cases, but certainly through the actions of their misguided Ministers. I move to report progress.