I wish I could reecho the hope which Deputy Blowick has expressed that nothing will happen to the land project. It is because we feel that something has happened to it that we have raised in this debate the question of the sale of the land project machinery. First of all, I should like to clear up a doubt which appeared to be in Deputy Allen's mind. He sought to suggest that the Fine Gael Party were in some way doubtful about their attitude to this Estimate. That, of course, is nonsense. The Fine Gael Party and the Opposition generally welcome so much of this Supplementary Estimate as will be beneficial to the agricultural industry.
We do enter one caveat in relation to a matter not contained in the Estimate. I refer to the policy announced by the Minister in which he declared that he was going to sell by public auction the machinery which he holds as a trustee for the people of the State and which has up to this operated the land project. It was because of that statement of policy that we moved the amendment to this Estimate. It could not have been moved sooner, because the statement of policy is not contained in the Estimate itself and was only announced by the Minister when he spoke. Naturally, we agree that whatever sum is required for fertilisers, for the limestone scheme, or anything of that kind, must be given. But we do take issue with the Minister on the statement of policy to which I refer.
Before I speak on behalf of my constituents, certainly in relation to the sale of this land project machinery, I should like to make some reference to the portion of the Estimate dealing with fertilisers. It is true certainly of my constituency, and I am sure of the rest of the country, that tillage farmers find to-day that they are unable profitably to engage in tillage by reason of the high prices of superphosphate and fertiliser. That has, undoubtedly, over the last 18 months, considerably retarded the tillage drive. When the Minister for Agriculture comes into this House, as he did when moving this Estimate, and is compelled to admit that in a most unbusinesslike manner he purchased some 38,000 tons of fertilisers in the dearest market that it could be bought in, that his particular transaction has resulted in a loss to this country of £250,000, money that could have been available to subsidise superphosphate for every single tillage farmer in the country, it certainly is proper for us in the Opposition to express our dismay and surprise that that is the position. £250,000 has been lost by the Minister for Agriculture in the last 12 months. That money could have paid rich dividends in the production of wheat, barley and oats. It could have added substantially to the tillage drive of this country, but it has been lost, wasted, thrown away by some serious mismanagement in the Department of Agriculture.
Very often in this House, when dealing with millions of pounds, we are inclined to gloss over mismanagement in a Department occasioning loss to the people, and far too often we turn the "Nelson eye" on losses of this kind. I do not think we should do it, and I think it is proper that we should expect from the Minister for Agriculture, when he is concluding, a very full explanation of how he came to lose £250,000 in the purchase of fertilisers in the last 12 months when every single farmer in this country is facing the highest possible price for the purchase of artificial manure and fertiliser, and the Minister himself has refused in any way to subsidise the sale to tillage farmers of the fertilisers that they do require.
Having said that with regard to this serious item of loss which now has to be made good in this particular Estimate, I want to add my voice in protest with regard to this sale of land project machinery. In doing so I would like to assure Independent Deputies, or any other Deputy in this House, that no one here has the right to lecture our Party or Deputies who support the inter-Party Government with regard to their attitude to the land rehabilitation scheme, which represented the hub of the development policy of the inter-Party Government. It was carried through despite the doubts, despite the, at times, unfair propaganda of our opponents, and it represented for our people the assurance that an Irish Government was going to undo the neglect of centuries of foreign occupation and enable our people to produce more from the land. It is a bit invidious to us on this side of the House that we heard Independent Deputies who, in fact, are passing through this House, trying to lecture us here on this side of the House with regard to the land project. We do not need their lectures. The people understand well the land project represents something so big that it cannot be destroyed by Fianna Fáil or anyone else, and that it represents a very important legacy which the inter-Party Government left to the farmers of this country. But we do, as strongly as we possibly can, object to, and will oppose, any effort, concealed or otherwise, to wind up and liquidate that project. That is what we believe is happening at the moment in connection with the declaration of policy by the present Minister for Agriculture.
We recollect that when the present Government came into office their tied political organ, the Irish Press, sounded the note with regard to the land project, which presumably represented the view of the inner circles of Fianna Fáil, when in an editorial of the 21st October, 1951, the Irish Press condemned the land project as costing too much, and not being the worthwhile capital scheme that we had held it out to be. We knew the moment that editorial appeared that inside the ranks of Fianna Fáil some effort such as this would be made to whittle down, to strangle and slow down that land project. Now it has come to this that some auctioneer with his hammer will sell off as scrap the machinery purchased with Marshall Aid held by our people and handed over to the present Minister as a trustee for our people. We are expected to accept that without a murmur, without opposition. If we did so we would be letting down the majority of the people of this country whom we represent. I know it has been expressed by other Deputies also that the auctioning of the assets of the Irish people and the Irish farmer by the present Minister for Agriculture is just the beginning of the end. It is throwing the small farmer of this country out of any opportunity of getting land reclamation work done. At the moment under the scheme as it now is one defect has been — and of course with any scheme there are particular defects — that there are so many applicants seeking work by the Department itself, there is such a queue calling upon the assistance of the Department that the Department finds it has not sufficient machinery to deal with all claims, and delay occurs in relation to applicants seeking the assistance of the Department. The applicants in almost every case are the small working farmers who cannot afford to engage contractors to do the work for them. It is that particular type of applicant who will now be told by the Minister: “You need not come here any longer; we will not provide the service, the machinery and the staff given to your luckier neighbour”— most of them apparently in County Kilkenny —“who got this work done by the Department of Agriculture”. These applicants will in fact be left out of the scheme.
I do not believe the Minister really considered this at all in any detail because, had he done so, he would have made a better case and he would have shown a better face. He says that the sale of this machinery to contractors will result in the work being speeded up. I do not know what he means by that or how he hopes it will be achieved. Assuming that he will devise some scheme whereby existing contractors will be enabled to purchase this expensive machinery and assuming that he will prevent another serious loss to the Exchequer, what then will happen?
We will probably have a number of contractors with a complete monopoly of all the necessary reclamation machinery. That group of contractors will be charged with the execution of land reclamation. Their work will be sanctioned by the Department of Finance and grants will become available to them when the work is completed. They will start out to do the work at a particular figure, probably the figure now obtaining, and no difficulty will arise. But, in 12 months' time, we will have a land reclamation contractors' association. That association will meet and will, at their meeting, add a little to the existing charge for land reclamation work. That will go from the Minister's Department to the Department of Finance and the Department of Finance will say: "We will not sanction that; the figure we paid last year is good enough; we will not give any more." The land reclamation contractors' association will say: "Right. You do not pay us and we will not do the work."
There will be one of two results; either there will be no reclamation work or there will be reclamation work at a higher cost to the Exchequer. That is exactly the situation it was intended to avoid when Deputy Dillon devised the existing administrative machinery for the land project. It was intended that private enterprise, on the one hand, and the State, on the other, would together carry out the work of land reclamation, neither having a complete service or a monopoly, and both being in a position to compete against one another so that a first-class service at a low cost would be assured.
We now have the Minister coming along deliberately creating a monopoly and deliberately depriving his own Department of the power to ensure an efficient service at a low cost. I think that is inexcusable. I know that the Minister's announcement has caused a sensation in my constituency. Time and again during the last six months I have raised by means of parliamentary question the fact that hundreds of applicants, all of them small farmers, seeking to have work done under the land project in Offaly have been unable to get that work done because sufficient machinery, they were told, is not available to the Department of Agriculture. Those applicants will now have to wait till Tibb's Eve before they can get whatever contractor becomes the owner of the reclamation machinery in Offaly to do the work for them.
This proposal is designed to benefit the big, substantial farmer. Deputy Killilea laughs at that. Deputy Gilbride sniggers. I wonder would either of them, particularly Deputy Killilea, go back to his constituency in the West and defend there his statement of policy.