When the House adjourned last night, I was urging the development of advisory services which would be based on the parish rather than on the county. In the parish of Bansha, which was one of the three parishes where the scheme was actually initiated, there is evidence already to show that the parochial organisation of advisory services yields results, because in that parish, in the short period of 18 months or two years at the request of the farmers themselves, the soil of nearly every farmer in the parish was tested. The use of fertilisers was increased to an unprecedented degree. We successfully initiated the operation of a scheme for the elimination of uneconomic cows from the dairy herds. We succeeded in persuading the farmers to make the grass ensilage the better to feed their cows in winter with a corresponding improvement in the milk yield of the dairy herds of the parish. We intensified the rehabilitation of land. All that was achieved with the enthusiastic co-operation of the farmers themselves. Perhaps, one of the most dramatic achievements of our work in Bansha reproduced what has already been done in the Loophead Peninsula, the reduction of calf mortality.
I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that in the parish of Bansha, where hundreds of calves had died every winter in the past, in the winter of 1950-51 the mortality of calves had been reduced to about 12 head. I believe that that can become one of the most important economic factors in our live-stock industry, as a result of a nation-wide campaign against calf mortality, which was initiated three years ago.
I would direct the attention of Deputies to Appendix 2 of the White Paper, circulated by the Minister for Agriculture yesterday. If they will look at the numbers of live stock, they will find under the heading "Other Cattle", four categories—cattle three years old and over, cattle two years old and under three, cattle one year old and under two, and cattle under one year. If they will look at the number of cattle under one year in the year 1947, they will find it is 850,000. If they will look at the cattle between one year and two years old in the following year, 1948, they will find it is 741,000. That is to say, that between 1947 and 1948, 109,000 calves disappeared. We do not export calves in that age group at all practically, so that those calves have disappeared through slaughter and death from disease.
If you will look at the number of cattle under one year in 1948, it is 852,000, and in 1949 it is 804,000, so that the loss has been reduced to 48,000 calves. If you will look at the number of cattle under one year in 1949 it is 957,000, and in 1950 the number of cattle between one year and two years is 911,000, which represents a loss of 46,000.
In 1950 there were 982,000 cattle under one year and in 1951 974,000 cattle between one year old and two years which shows the dramatic development that, instead of losing 100,000 calves as we did between 1947 and 1948, we lost only 8,000 between 1950 and 1951. I do not say that the average annual loss was 100,000 calves, but taking that figure as a convenient one, these cattle reared to three year olds would sell for £50 apiece one with another. If those figures were valid, this reduction in calf mortality would be worth £5,000,000 per annum to the live-stock industry of this country through no other activity than preventing the calf mortality. Divide that figure by two in order to arrive at a conservative estimate of the value of this saving in young cattle and we get a figure of at least £2,500,000 per annum accruing to the live-stock industry as a result of the elimination of disease, mainly in calves.
In Bansha I do not think the potentialities of the parish plan are by any means exhausted. I had promised the parish of Ballyduff in Waterford that the parish plan would be extended there. In fact, it never was owing to difficulties which presented themselves, but the co-operative apple-packing plant in Dungarvan is part of that undertaking because a survey of the parish of Ballyduff was made and it emerged in the course of that survey how considerable the orchard area of that particular district was.
The senior horticultural inspector of the Department wanted an opportunity to bring the horticultural section of the Department fully to bear so that we might determine what fruit might be garnered from a concentrated effort. In these circumstances, I directed him to concentrate his attention on that particular area of the south-east of Ireland with the result that we have the co-operative apple-packing plant in Dungarvan where a group of farmers formed their own co-operative.
They carry out the cultural operations through the medium of the technical staff of their co-operative which sprays many of the orchards up to eight times in the course of the year. The farmers pick the apples, the co-operative collects them at the farm and pays them a basic price on delivery of the apples at the packing station in Dungarvan. The apples are packed and graded there and stored in gas storage chambers and, when the marketing season in the spring comes, they are repacked and regarded and the farmer gets his second payment corresponding with the quality of his apples as they come out of the gas storage. It is not an exaggeration to say that the bulk of the orchard owners in that area have this year received twice as much for their apples as they ever received before and there is every reason for believing that the payment for their apples hereafter will be even better.
All that leads me more and more to the conclusion, without going into the details of the parishes of Tydavnet in Monaghan and Ardee in Louth, that if you can mobilise from existing county instructors and future graduates approximately 300 agricultural advisers and allocate one to every three parishes and rejuvenate the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society so that it would effectively organise co-operation amongst the farmers, not only for the purpose of manufacturing butter, but for the purpose of marketing apples, marketing onions, marketing fowl, marketing eggs, marketing pigs and the hundred and one things which the small farmer has to do, no one of which could not be better done through co-operation, you can completely revolutionise the whole life of the small farmers of Ireland into the most highly efficient and economical producers that can conceivably have the custody of the land of Ireland.
We had planned to sustain the parish plan as adumbrated by me now by the establishment of a new institute of agricultural and veterinary science which would constitute an approved college of the National University and of Dublin University. The buildings and equipment for that were to be supplied by an appropriation from the Marshall Aid Grant Counterpart Fund and that scheme was, I believe, approved in principle by the Marshall Aid Administration. I had in fact invited and secured the gracious acceptance of a distinguished scientist to be first president of that institute and it was in the process of organisation when I left office. I do not want to pretend that the major difficulties had been overcome or that I left my successor a cut-and-dried scheme. I certainly did not and it would be an arduous job to carry to completion the plans we had in mind. I trust he intends to carry them to completion and to ensure that the existing research institutions under his control and the faculties of University College, Dublin, and University College, Cork, will all be brought together with the veterinary college in an institute that will reflect credit on the country and provide a steady supply of veterinary surgeons and agricultural advisers sufficient to man the parish plan on the lines outlined by me now some time in the early future.
