Deputy Flynn was supporting the Party now in office for 16 years before the inter-Party Government came in, and in all my reading of Dáil debates I did not notice that Deputy Flynn had the slightest interest in establishing a forest in Lickeen or any other part of South Kerry. It is only when we gave it the fillip during our period in office that Deputy Flynn began to wake up to the possibilities of forests, possibly as a vote-catching stunt rather than for the good of the country.
I was disheartened when I found that the Minister had decided to cut down the planting programme to 12,500 acres. Is he wise in that? If his argument is that the supply of plantable land would not be sufficient to meet a greater annual target, could he not overcome that by doing two things—first, by increasing the acquisition staff in the Department and, secondly, by offering a more attractive price than is being offered at the present time? I would like to know from the Minister when he is replying if he has altered the ceiling price in the last 12 months. If he has not done so, I think he is not wise in continuing that ceiling, because it must be admitted that even from the poorest land the income has increased slightly, and when the income has increased slightly the cash value of the land has increased. If the Minister is determined to proceed with forestry on a big scale he should increase the price. At present the price is holding up matters. Many people consider the price that they have been offered is too shabby, even in cases where the income of the land was not very considerable. It must be admitted that for the last three, four or five years, since the price of agricultural produce stepped up a little, the price of land increased accordingly. If it is intended to proceed with afforestation in the manner that we would all wish, many difficulties will be eliminated if the two suggestions that I have made are carried out, namely, to increase the price payable for land if that has not already been done, and to put more acquisition staff at the disposal of the director. I do not know whether or not the acquisition staff has been increased during the last 12 months, but such an increase would be very desirable.
The Minister has admitted that approximately 15,000 acres were planted last year. The target set by the inter-Party Government was 25,000 acres. I have not the slightest doubt that if the inter-Party Government were in office that target would be reached in a very short time. Deputy Flynn adopts the foolish attitude that miracles can be worked overnight, that an afforestation programme can be jumped up from 3,000, 4,000 to 6,000 acres per year to three or four times that acreage. That is childish and he does not believe it himself. He tries to pretend that he believes it. He knows that it cannot be done. It could be reached in a few years if the proper approach were made.
Last year, when the Minister's Party was soliciting support in this House to enable them to form a Government and to displace the inter-Party Government, amongst the famous 17 points, almost every single one of which has been ditched, was the afforestation programme that was filched from us. Candidates went out and said that they would carry out a better programme than we were carrying out, that they would do it better. The Taoiseach mentioned in one of his speeches that it was his policy to acquire a great deal of land that hitherto was unplantable, to make it available for afforestation and to put it under timber.
Personally, I have absolutely no faith in the present Government's policy, not only in afforestation but in almost everything else. They made promises to lure people to support them and flagrantly broke them. That is what has happened in what I consider to be one of the most important aspects of government so far as rural Ireland is concerned.
If we are to put into practice that part of the Constitution which prescribes that the maximum number of people will be maintained on the land, afforestation is one of the means by which that can be done. We are very fond of talking of and bewailing the flight from the land. That flight is taking place day after day. The cutting down of the afforestation programme will increase it.
Forestry work is one of the most useful kinds of employment that can be given in rural areas. Investment in afforestation is not like any other investment. I do not mind what advice the Minister has received from officials of the Department of Finance, the directors of the Central Bank or any other body. I maintain that the safest possible investment at present in this country is to plant something that will increase in value day after day. That is something that cannot be said of practically any other form of Government investment. It is argued, and it is true, that afforestation is a long-term investment. That is agreed. This generation would feel proud and very grateful if some Government 25, 30 or 45 years ago had planted a fairly substantial acreage of forests which could have been handed over to the Irish Government on its establishment. We would say of such a Government that they were not afraid of the future, that they were not afraid to sink money in one of the soundest investments in this country.
I want to tell the Minister that he is certainly taking a retrograde step when he decides to cut down on afforestation. It may be argued that the supply of plantable land is slow in coming in. It is slow while we are prepared to pay only a shabby, mean price for land. We are asking those who are making a living on the land to sell it to the State for a shabby price. These people are not fools. When they sell land to the State they are parting with their means of livelihood.
While Deputy Flynn and other Deputies, I take it, would have us acquire land compulsorily, I would not favour such a course. There is only one thing to do to secure plantable land, and that is to give a good price. If the price has not been altered in the last 12 months, it is a shabby price and it is definitely keeping many farmers from closing with the Forestry Division.
I notice that the Grant-in-Aid for land acquisition is up by £15,000. That is a very poor gesture indeed. The acquisition of land is the foundation stone of forestry work and expansion and there is no use in impeding progress by not having sufficient staff to deal with acquisition and by paying a price which will deter people who would otherwise sell land to the Department from closing the deal. An Act was passed within the last five or six months for the improvement of what is known as the undeveloped areas. Building factories in towns is an ideal thing, and I should like to see it go ahead. At the same time, I do not want to see the rural part of Ireland neglected. While the Undeveloped Areas Act will do a certain amount of good by providing factories in towns, it is also necessary to prevent the flight from the land. That Act will not prevent the flight from the land. It might in some cases only hasten or accelerate it. If we want to keep the people in the countryside, if we want to do what Goldsmith wrote about, to maintain our peasantry, we must bring the work to their doors; we must induce them to stay on the land. Will anyone show me a better means of doing that than by afforestation? At the same time, afforestation will leave a crop behind it which will be improving in value year by year.
I have been eight or nine years in this House and I have not ever heard any proposal to check the flight from the land which is better than afforestation. We must admit that afforestation is a crying need in this country. In 1950-51, the last year the inter-Party Government were in office, something like £8,000,000 was paid for timber and wood products imported from foreign countries. I am sure, if the Minister had any means of finding it out, that the figure was even more than £8,000,000 last year. That will continue because our reserves of matured commercial timber must be going down. If in our generation we do not do anything to replace these reserves we will lay ourselves open to condemnation by posterity.
In those areas where new forest centres were established, particularly along the west coast from Donegal to Kerry, they met with the complete approval of the people, particularly the younger generation from 18 to 40 years of age. They saw at once the advantages to be derived from the development of afforestation. The sum provided in this Estimate for afforestation is something less than £1,000,000, and £1,000,000 out of £101,000,000 which we are to spend this year is a very small sum for such an important Department. No matter what pressure was brought to bear on the Minister, he should not have yielded to pressure to cut down the Forestry Vote. Whatever other Vote was cut down, he had no right to yield to the slashing of this Vote by almost £250,000. It is a serious injustice to the country. The Minister has failed very seriously in regard to one of the most important aspects of his Ministry by allowing the Vote to be cut down. I do not know how he feels about it, but if he yielded easily to that cutting down, he certainly has been guilty of a gross misdemeanour as a Minister. He should not have yielded. If money had to be saved, it could have been easily saved in other directions. The axe should not have been allowed to fall on such an important matter as afforestation.
Mention has been made about the grant of £10 per acre. Some Deputies seem to have a completely erroneous idea of what that £10 is for. I should like to see that grant increased. It was my intention, if I were in office when fencing material was available and when the privately-owned nurseries would be in a position to supply plants to those who wanted them, to increase that grant as an added inducement to private owners of land to put down even one statute acre of timber on their land. In that connection, we must remember that the bog plots attached to holdings provided by the Congested Districts Board and the Land Commission in days gone by are being rapidly cut away. I am puzzled to know what method of heating and cooking is to take the place of turf when these are all cut away. I am reliably informed that the materials necessary for protective fencing of plantations is now plentiful again. I therefore urge the Minister to increase the grant and also to bring to the notice of landholders the wisdom of and, perhaps, the necessity for putting down at least one acre of timber on some waste corner of their land. Even on the best corner, it would be an acre of land very well employed and would pay handsome dividends in time.
While we have an abundance of bog land in some areas, the smaller bogs in other areas are being rapidly cut away. No smallholder of land, in my opinion, will be able to stand up to the cost of buying fuel, whether it be turf, coal or timber, because it would run from £35 to £50 per year for the average small holding of from £7 to £20 valuation. That is a sum which the average smallholder would not be able to bear and the result, in my opinion, will be a further flight from the land and a further depopulation of the small holdings. Now is the time to advise these people and put this problem before them as I did while I was in the Department. I would sweeten the pill somewhat by increasing the grant by £2 or £3 or even £5 per acre so as to induce them to put down their own plantations.
Might I say to Deputies who have been advocating that the provision of shelter belts should be a function of the Forestry Department that I would not like to see that happening? If we burden the Department with the problem of providing shelter belts for every holding in the country the main job of afforestation will go by the board. The Forestry Department was never intended for that. The county committees of agriculture are very suitably staffed for that particular kind of work and it is a very useful kind of work. These shelter belts break the monotony of what would otherwise be a barren countryside and they provide a useful shelter for houses. The county committees of agriculture are the people to facilitate farmers who want to provide themselves with shelter belts.
Before I leave that point I want to draw the Minister's attention to paragraph V of the summary and recommendations in the Cameron Report which reads as follows:—
"A new acquisition programme should be developed, and approved by the Board of Review. This programme should resolve the conflicting demands for land use and, in so far as the commercial forestry programme is concerned, it should include the primary requirement for establishment of forest area aggregations of not less than 3,000 acres. To facilitate the acquisition of commonage areas, expropriation proceedings should be taken in cases where 75 per cent. of the holders of commonage rights are agreeable to sale."
I should like to have the Minister's private opinion on that. I have my own opinion, but I do not propose to give it now. The paragraph continues:—
"The ceiling purchase price for plantable land should be raised to £12 per acre with a proviso for higher purchase prices on approval by the cabinet Board of Review."
I fully agree with him that the price for plantable land should be increased and I want to impress on the Minister the absolute necessity of such an increase.
I notice that the Minister is aiming at a very high figure for Appropriations-in-Aid — £172,000 as against £160,000. I should like to know if he is aiming at that figure because of the increased price for timber sales in the saw mills or is he basing it on an increased sale of timber. We have a good deal of mature timber all over the country, mostly on lands purchased from time to time by the Department, and, while I do not claim to be an expert, my view is that some of that timber may very easily go past maturity and have little value except as firewood. I suggest that a visit to the saw mill in Dundrum erected some time ago would give the Minister a completely new slant on what I would describe as the profitable side of the Forestry Department. Every one of us in the House and outside is too fond of looking at the Forestry Department as a Department which is costing a lot of money and doing little good beyond putting down plantations and giving a certain amount of employment.
There is a vast amount of mature timber on State forest lands and I want to impress on the Minister that that timber should not be allowed to go past maturity into the firewood stage for want of up-to-date saw mills to convert it and to give it to the people who are anxious to get it and to pay a reasonable price, and a good price, at present. Shortly before the change of Government, Shelton Abbey was purchased and there were something like 700 acres of timber attached to it, most of which was matured. I hope that for the sake of saving a few pounds on whatever the erection of a well equipped modern saw mill to saw that timber up and give it to the people who want it, people who are willing to pay a good price for it, would cost, that timber will not be allowed to fall into the firewood stage, as might very easily happen. I should like to know from the Minister how much of the £172,750 will be realised by an increased price for timber, the Order for which he gave some time last September or October, as he informed me in a reply to a question before Christmas.
As regards Avondale, could the Minister let us know what is happening about the proposed transfer of the forestry centre from Avondale to Shelton Abbey? Avondale is hopelessly small for the accommodation of forestry trainees at present. It has certain advantages that Shelton Abbey will not have, in the matter of the provision of suitable ground, plantations and so on, but that can be easily met and it should not be regarded as a reason why the whole school should not be transferred to Shelton Abbey, since Avondale has served its purpose and, the family being now grown up, so to speak, is not now capable of housing them. Shelton Abbey was purchased largely because of the splendid accommodation the house offered. That was one of the reasons which weighed heavily in the acquisition of Shelton Abbey from the Earl of Wicklow a couple of years ago. I hope these trainees will be transferred as soon as possible.
I hope, also, that the Minister will establish what I proposed to establish, a research institute attached to the Forestry Department. As our forestry acreage grows, problems will crop up, because the new forest acreage is bound to bring its own diseases and pests, the same as any other crop. The country is free of them at present, and we have a perfectly virgin soil to work on. I think I am correct in saying that our forests at present are completely free from pests and diseases of any kind. We should have a research institute which would be ready to pounce on any stranger that might come in, and, seeing that transport and travel are so quick at present, it would not surprise me to find some disease that was not known any nearer than Canada or Labrador had broken out here, which would do immense damage to our forests in a short space of time.
There is no controlling of these pests, because there are 1,000 and one ways in which they can travel. The very elements favour them at times, and people travelling and the conveyance of merchandise facilitates them. We are free so far. That is my information up to last year, and, as we are free, the way to maintain that freedom is by the establishment of a research institute ready to pounce on any intruder who comes in here and to wipe him out before he has time to get a foothold rather than spending millions in trying to eradicate some pest or disease after it has got a foothold. There are many other things such a research institute could do which are absolutely necessary if we are to tackle the problem in a proper way, but the one thing that scares me stiff is the thought that we might not be prepared to meet any kind of danger that might threaten our forests in that respect.
There is another matter which I have raised by parliamentary question on two occasions. In some areas, a difference of wages exists, due to the fact that forestry workers' wages are coupled with the local county council rate. Where a forest centre lies across the border of two counties, serious discontent is caused. There is one area I have in mind, portion of which is in my constituency, the Cong Forest. Workers all over County Mayo are getting £4 per week, while workers in County Galway are getting only £3 12s. 6d. These are the two county council rates.
The workers in the Cong forest who work in the County Mayo portion receive £3 12s. 6d., and they feel that they should get what their neighbours in Lough Carra, Doolough forest and other centres are getting, £4. For the sake of the few hundred pounds which it would cost, the Minister should remove this discontent by giving the higher rate in the whole forest area. It is not an unreasonable demand and it is not a demand that will involve the Minister or the Department of Finance in huge sums. The cost of the removal of this discontent would more than pay for itself in the contentment created and the better output brought about. It would also show a little generosity and would show that the Department and the Minister are not out to chisel down the wages of these men, or to catch them by means of what they might think is a cheap trick. It is something which, in the tying up of forestry workers' wages with county council wages, did not occur to us until it cropped up later. At that time an increase in wages was absolutely necessary and it was done. It does not exist except in two or three forest centres over the country. To spend the few hundred pounds which would wipe out that disconent would be a generous gesture on the Minister's part and nobody could grumble at it.
Once again I should like to deplore the cutting down of the forestry programme. If we want to stop the flight from the land we will have to bring industries of some kind into the rural areas. It is a fine thing to bring industries into rural towns, but we must bring them to the country places which are miles from any town. If you do not establish them, in 40 or 50 years you will have a completely depopulated land and all the population of the country living in towns. Then it will be too late.
The Minister must be well aware that the flight from the land is heaviest where the quality of the land is poorest. That is very plain to be seen. I am sure that in the recent by-election compaign in North Mayo the Minister saw houses tumbled in, houses that a few short years ago sheltered happy, contented families. This has been happening, so much so during the last 20 years that I would say that some villages have been wiped out by 50 per cent. If the cause for this were a war or something over which the Government had no control, we would all be completely unanimous in saying that it was nothing short of a national disaster. Yet it is happening under our noses. It is happening to houses here, there and all over the place. Slowly the people are moving off the land. The reason is that the income from a small-holding is not fit to maintain a family at the present time. Taxes, rates and every other expense have gone up, and that is something over which the people have no control. The only thing they can do when they find themselves on the wrong side of the ledger is to clear out.
We can do away with that state of affairs to some extent. I do not say that we can provide a complete cure-all for this malady, the flight from the land, which is so serious, but forestry properly carried out and driven hard into these areas would do a lot to stop it, and maintain what any country's boast should be: a happy, contented peasantry. Any cut in the Forestry Vote will have an adverse effect.
I do not make any secret of the fact that I was proud of the strides forestry made during the three years I was with the Department. My earnest hope was to be there long enough to put forestry on a firm, solid footing. One thing which causes me grievous disappointment and dismay is to find the Vote cut down and chiselled away. The Minister is guilty of a very serious misdemeanour when he allows that to happen. He should not have allowed it to happen. He should have increased that Vote and kept on increasing it until the forestry programme reached 25,000 acres, or even 20,000 acres. The Minister knows quite well that there were plans in his office for planting 19,800 acres in one year alone. The Minister may say that that is grand for one year, but that there will be no plantable land if it continues.
I would not take that for an answer. The Minister has two means of getting land; to give a price for it, and secondly to give the Department sufficient acquisition officers to deal with the acquisition of land. I will not ask him to do it all of a sudden because he cannot do it. I would not be so unreasonable as to ask him to do so, but inside three or four years he could hit the 20,000 acre programme quite easily if he just faced up to the job of work. I do not say that for the purpose of blaming. I say it for one purpose: to bring home to the Minister as forcibly as I can the usefulness of this side of the work of his Department.
It will be very serious if he intends to be slack about that. The Forestry Department can get all the land they want. They have plenty of nurseries and a staff in the Department which is second to none in the State. I never met one person there who was not boiling over with enthusiasm to get on with his work. I am safe in saying that many of them did overtime for which they never got a penny pay but which they did out of sheer downright enthusiasm. In what branch of the Civil Service covering the whole 13 Departments do we find that except in the Forestry Department?
The Minister should definitely increase the Estimate instead of reducing it. He can find plantable land, and I have told him the way to do it. That is the method I used. When I took up that office the ceiling was just half what I think it is at the present time. There was one acquisition officer to deal with the intake of land by the Forestry Department in the whole of the Twenty-Six Counties, to deal with title and with all the slow tanglesome matters which have to be dealt with before land can be transferred from an owner or owners to a Department.
It is not good that in the short space of a 12-month the Minister can go back on all the promises which were made if not by himself at least with his authority by his Party when they were seeking power last year. An afforestation programme was one of the principal points in the famous 17-point programme. They have gone back on that. The people of the country were led at that time to believe and we, the members of the Opposition, understood from the programme that they meant to carry out this 25,000 acre development. You walk in here, however, and within a year you calmly tell us that you have cut the programme by half and cut the Estimate by £250,000. If that is going to create a healthy atmosphere in the country, I know very little about politics and I must go to school again. If people who seek and get the responsibility of forming a Government and running the country treat their promises in that way, I am afraid that I for one do not know anything at all about trying to live up to my promises.