When I moved to report progress last night, I was dealing with the price of wheat and the attitude of the Government to wheat-growing generally. As I stated then, when we came into office in 1951 we increased the price of wheat by 5/- a barrel and after the harvest, in order to induce our farmers to produce more in 1952-53, we again increased the price by 7/6 a barrel. There had been no change in the price of wheat from 1947. It has been suggested here that the Coalition Government were in favour of wheat production, but the attitude of the then Minister in the Coalition was that he did not want wheat growing. It must have been so, because for the past 20 years, since it became the policy of Fianna Fáil to extend wheat-growing, on every possible occasion Deputy Dillon tried to kill that scheme—and when he became Minister he helped in killing it. You can kill an industry, you can prevent people from producing an article, not by direct prohibition but by making it uneconomic for them to do so. That was the policy adopted by the Coalition from 1948 until we came into office in 1951. As I stated on many other occasions in this House the price of 62/6 was fixed in October, 1947, and there was no change from that until the graded system came in in April, 1951, and, of course, we changed that graded system when we were giving the increase in July of that year.
Why was there that opposition to wheat growing? Do Deputy Dillon and the people who support him not realise that it is of vital importance to this country to produce wheat? Deputy Palmer stated yesterday that this country was not suitable for the production of wheat. I say that it is eminently suitable.