Would Deputy Lemass say what time is required for the reply on this motion?
Wheat Prices—Motion.
Mr. Lemass
I think 20 minutes would be sufficient, for the designated speaker.
Very well. I will call on him at 7.40.
I move the motion on the Order Paper standing in the names of a number of Fianna Fáil Deputies and myself:—
That Dáil Éireann disapproves of the price fixed for next year's wheat crop and asks for its immediate reconsideration.
As is plain to everybody, the motion is phrased in moderate terms and there is no need for a heated discussion. The problem is too serious for the agricultural community, for either heated argument or flippancy. They are in no mood at present for flippancy or side-stepping. It is a serious motion with a serious object in view.
The first question that comes to my mind, as a result of the price fixed by the Minister for Agriculture—and, I am sure, approved by the Government —is what really is the attitude of the Government towards wheat production in this country. That is the question that everybody is asking and they want to know if the price is a reflection of the attitude and of future policy. Does it mean that wheat growing is not so important to our national economy or national security, that it is something that is going to be discarded or at least very, very seriously curtailed? If that is the case, I think this Dáil would be well advised to deal with this matter and this motion very seriously.
It was the Fianna Fáil Government in 1932 who introduced and encouraged wheat growing. It was one of the primary aims of their policy. They believed that it should be the primary aim of the national policy of any Government in this country, because it was a national necessity and a national safeguard. It was quite clear at that time—having, as was then the case, only 21,000 acres of wheat in the country—that if that state of affairs were allowed to continue this country would be in a very vulnerable position. We all know that the world has changed very considerably in the past 30 or 35 years, that it has become very contracted, that it has become very small and that the weapons of destruction have been very much improved. We were all out for the production of wheat and the wisdom of that policy was very clearly demonstrated here during the years of the emergency.
The reduction that has been made in the price of wheat is 12/6 per barrel. If the Government wish to indicate that they desire a reduction, I hold that this steep reduction is altogether unwarranted—particularly in view of the fact that we have just experienced the worst harvest in living memory. In my opinion, the agricultural community deserve better of the Minister and the Government than a sweeping reduction of this kind.
I would like to know did the Minister consult agricultural organisations? Did he discuss with them the position, before fixing the price? I would even like to ask him did he discuss it with the farmer members of the Fine Gael Party? I am sure, if he did, that it was not they or the agricultural organisations throughout the country, who advised him to make this cut in price, in any case to make it to the extent he did. I can understand, of course, that as Minister for Agriculture, he has a fairly difficult position in the Cabinet, because he has very few farmers to support him there. The percentage is very small but, nevertheless, there are quite a number of farmer-Deputies in the Fine Gael Party, many of whom, I am sure, have embarked on the growing of wheat. I find it very hard to believe that any one of them would admit to the Minister, or agree with him, that the farmers have made the huge profit out of wheat growing that some people suggest.
The reduction in the price of wheat at 12/6 per barrel means, on an average of eight barrels to the statute acre, a very sweeping reduction; it means a reduction of £5 per statute acre in the farmer's income. With that, we have to consider what decrease there has been, or is likely to be, in the farmer's outlay. The one, in my opinion, should be related to the other, but £5 is not the reduction in full; it is not the only decrease in his income, because there are many other things that have to be taken into consideration. As I said, there has been no decrease in his outlay; rates are high, and are likely to continue so, if not further increased, in the coming year.
I met a number of merchants dealing in fertilisers, who told me it is likely that superphosphate will be increased by at least 10/- per ton, and that sulphate of ammonia would go up by £3 per ton. All that has to be taken into consideration, and should be considered by the Minister when fixing prices. I am sure that the Government had information to enable them to know as much about the position as any of the merchants, or manure manufacturers, in this country. In addition to that, the farmers have to pay, and rightly so, a fixed agricultural wage, in which there is not likely to be a diminution—indeed I would be sorry to see such a diminution. On top of that, there is the weekly half-holiday, and the annual week's holiday, but the farmers get no relief in respect of that. In my opinion, all these things should have been taken into consideration and a price fixed which would be an encouragement to the farmers to continue the growing of wheat, which is, as I have said, a national necessity, the foundation of national self-security.
I hope that national self-security is not going to be undermined, that this whole question of price will be reconsidered by the Government, and that an improvement will be brought about. Anybody perhaps is liable to make a mistake, but it is not easy to excuse a Government for coming to a rash decision, particularly on an important matter like this. In addition, the price fixed has been fixed on a periodical gradient basis, and the periods that have been taken are very strange. We have from August to November, including November, of course, for the £3 10s. price per barrel on a 63 bushel-weight content. We know that a 63 bushel-weight content, and over, is a very superior wheat, and that the percentage of farmers who have got that, even in past seasons, is very small indeed.
What was the idea of stretching it to November? Is it intended as a curb on the use of the combine harvester? Does the Minister and the Government wish to eliminate the combine harvester? If that is so, it is very inconsistent with pronouncements made by the Minister in this House, when on occasion he urged mechanisation of the most modern type, and, in fact, on one occasion, he sarcastically referred to the horse with the bush tied to his tail. A number of people have come to use the combine harvester, and I believe it was very necessary to do so in order to harvest their crops at the proper time. But if that is not so, or if there is some reason to give relief to the millers in the taking in of the wheat, does the Minister seriously contend that an increase of 2/6 per barrel is sufficient remuneration to the people who hold on to their wheat?
The Minister knows quite well that, compared with other crops, dried wheat, in good condition, has a much greater wastage than any other cereal we know. Dried wheat is almost like shot wheat, and the simplest tear in a sack will allow a stone of it to be scattered about, before one would realise it. The Minister also knows very well that rats and mice are very attracted to it, and that, unless one has an almost air-tight compartment, they will be able to get there, and take away a considerable amount and destroy a considerable amount. There are many other ways. I could understand if the Minister had fixed the first period from August to, say, the end of October when at least 50 per cent. of the grain is delivered at the mills but I cannot understand why he stretched it out to November and then brought in December when, I think he will ascertain from the statistical returns in his own Department, a much smaller percentage of wheat is delivered.
We come on to January and we find that an additional half-crown is being given from January to July. The percentage of wheat not delivered at the mills after the month of January and from the period of January to July is negligible. A certain amount of wheat, of course, is held over by seedsmen for wheat and a certain amount of it is held over by the farmers themselves, but of the total amount of wheat produced in the previous season of the previous year, the amount that is held over to be delivered to the mills after that period is not 2 per cent. of the entire crop. The extra half-crown bringing the price for top-grade seed wheat to £3 15s. is not by any means a sufficient inducement to any farmer to hold it over for that period.
I wonder if the Government have agreed that the farmer's profit from wheat is too high? Will that be one of the reasons advanced? When they take profit into consideration what profit do they go on, is it gross profit or is it net profit? If the farmer's profit has been gone into on the net basis, despite all we hear to the contrary about the fine time they have, that they are pampered and living in luxury, I can tell the Deputies here, the Minister and the Government that the net profit is very small and has always been very small. If we look up the returns of those who are given a secondary education or even a university education in this country we will find that although the farmer in my opinion has as much natural love and affection for his children as the parents of any other section of the community, the number of children of the farming community in proportion to the population and to the number of farmers will not compare at all with that of the children of those in the professional classes or in salaried occupations. That is a criterion that goes to prove that despite all we hear about the huge profits the farmers are making it is not at all the case.
Has this reduction in price been decided upon in order to curtail what has been described as the speculator or the rancher? As far as speculators are concerned this is a free country and the person who so desires can speculate on anything and I do not think there is any written law to hinder that. When we come to this question of the rancher, in addition to being a rancher either as a grass farmer, a wheat farmer or anything else, you must have the land; you must have an area of land whereby you can be described as a rancher. The number of people who speculated is a very small percentage of those who went in for wheat production last year, and the number of ranchers is also very small. It may be stated that we have foreigners, and so on, coming in and taking over land, going in for ranching and cashing in on it, then after a few years when the land is impoverished they will clear out. It is news to me to know that there is this great pool of land in the counties adjoining Dublin or anywhere in the Midlands that can truly be described as ranches. The speculators had to get the land on a letting basis from whoever had that large amount of land. As regards the rancher, if he is that type of person known as the gentleman farmer and who would rather let his land or lease it for a purpose of that kind, I would like to know where we will find so many of them even in Counties Meath, Louth, Kildare, Carlow, or any of the other places. If there are many such, as I stated here on a previous occasion, there is a very sure way of dealing with them and the Minister and his Government might direct the attention of the Irish Land Commission to such people. That would end for all time this question of ranching either as grass farmers or as wheat farmers.
The people I am most concerned about are the small and mediumsized farmers and they are the people who are being hardest hit. As I mentioned a few minutes ago, the reduction in price means £5 per acre. Take the farmer of £20 valuation and up to £30 who has three acres of wheat. That means that there is £15, if he was sowing three acres, taken away with one stroke of the pen. After all the hardship that he has endured during the present harvest, as is well known to the Minister and to the Government, £15 is £15 and it is not easy to pick it up on the road or anywhere else. It means a considerable amount to the farmer when he is faced with his rate demand notes, with bills for manures and for all the other requirements of his household. The cost of living that we heard so much about, and in which there were to be such sweeping reductions—which have not been brought about—affects the farmers very considerably as well as any other section of the community. They have to purchase provisions that they are not able to produce on their own land and there is no reduction there: there is no reduction on anything.
This decision by the Government will have a very detrimental effect on our whole agricultural economy. Farmers have gone wholeheartedly into debt to the Agricultural Credit Corporation for the purchase of modern machinery. They have gone out to expand their economy as far as agriculture is concerned in many other ways and is this what they are going to get now for their risks and endeavours and efforts to bring to full fruition the policy of Sinn Féin? —for that is what it is: that is what the policy of wheat-growing means, i.e., self-sufficiency up to a reasonable standard. That was the gospel we were brought up on, anyhow, and we believe it is the true gospel for the welfare of the people of this country.
There is a lot of talk about the people who went into wheat-growing last year because the price was so generous and so high—that it was because of that that they went into it on such a large scale. I happened to meet a member of the Oireachtas in the restaurant in November of 1953. I may say that he is not a member of the Fianna Fáil Party: he is a very prominent member and supporter of the Fine Gael Party. He is also a very big man in business and in the livestock trade. I had a bit of a joke with him and I just said to him: "Was it because of your defeat in the by-election in August that you did not come down to the Ballinasloe October Fair?" He replied: "It is no such thing. I am not going to buy any live stock at all this year. I have been across in England and I have contacts there with people who are in the livestock trade. The opinion they expressed to me was that cattle bought now this year will lose 40 per cent. next October." Then he said: "I am conveying that information to your Minister for Agriculture." That was the impression that was created. There was a guaranteed price for wheat and many of the people who went into the growing of wheat did not even think that that price was good enough. I recollect a resolution that was before the Fine Gael Árd Fheis asking for £5 per barrel as the fixed price for wheat, as the price that was fixed by the then Minister for Agriculture was not considered at all sufficient. That was why a great many people, in order to utilise their land and in order to neutralise the effect of the decrease in live-stock prices, as they imagined and believed, went in for wheat-growing to the extent they did in this year of 1954.
I do not propose to delay the time of the House. I know there are a number of other speakers from all sides of the House who are anxious to express their opinions on this question. I regret the Minister's failure to protect the interests of the agricultural community within the Cabinet. I understand his difficulty. After all, as I mentioned, it is a Cabinet of professional gentlemen and salaried people—almost 80 per cent.—and it is not so easy for him, perhaps, to carry his point there. If this motion is supported by the farmer Deputies on the Fine Gael benches and in Clann na Talmhan—as I think they should support it, without Party prejudices entering into it—and if it is carried in this House, then I believe the Minister's hand will be strengthened in going back to his Cabinet and asking to have this whole question reconsidered. In doing that, he will be doing something that will give encouragement to the people. It will raise hope in the hearts and minds of the people who believed that this policy of wheat production in this country was accepted by the present Government and that it would be understood as being the proper policy for every future Government—because that is as it should be.
There would be very little use in raising an Army here, no matter how powerful we might have it, if we did not have the staple food for our people produced from our own land. Every country in Europe at the present time which is in a position to do is giving higher prices and greater subsidies for the growing of wheat. Why are they doing it? They are doing it because they know it is necessary from a national self-security point of view, If we are to travel away from wheat and go back to the old position, where have we the guarantee in the world of to-day that, like from 1939 to 1945, we will not become isolated once again, with all the waters around our shores infested, if you like, with submarines and other implements of destruction? That is a point that not merely the agricultural community have to consider but which the general community have to consider as well. It is something that the Labour people should also take into consideration and, in addition to that, the Labour people should take into consideration the fact that a great deal of employment was created in the flour mills all over the country. Is that now going to be thrown to the winds? Is that now going to be no good? Is that the way the farmers are going to be treated? The farmers are paying their share for the protection that has been afforded to the industrialists and manufacturers of this country—and why should they not do so? In the same way, the rest of the community should not complain about paying our farmers a fair price for their wheat— a price that will encourage them to continue in the production of the food that is of the greatest value to all the people. I ask the Dáil to take this motion very seriously and to discuss it, as it should be discussed, on its merits and to give to it a majority which will enable the Minister to make a strong case to the Government for reconsideration of this whole matter.
I wish to second this motion. When I mentioned here a little over a week ago that the farmers were stunned and staggered as a result of the blow that had been struck them by the Government I was correctly anticipating what we now know to be the fact from the protest meetings which have been held in every grain-growing county. Obviously, very scant sympathy was given by the Minister and his Government to the hardships suffered by the grain growers during one of the worst harvest years in living memory. Very few grain growers expected after the herculean task in which they had engaged that the reward of the Government would have been to strike at them by cutting the price of wheat, at a very minimum, by something between 15 and 16 per cent. The Minister yesterday in reply to a question put by me informed the House that last year, which could be regarded as a normal harvest year, 18 per cent. qualified for the peak price and something like 48 per cent. for the next price carrying a reduction of 2/6 per barrel. Therefore, in examining this price we cannot approach it from the angle of a maximum price of 70/-per barrel. We have to assume, conditions being what they are, that very many farmers in the grain-growing areas will get substantially less than the maximum price.
Some time ago farmers began to question what the approach of the Government was. After to-day I think they will seriously question the matter further since we have one section of the community assailed in a very important commodity with a very big proportion of their incomes severely slashed, while at the same time we have another comfortable, smug, well-cared-for section receiving consideration from the Government by the implementation of a very substantial increase.
These are the questions which will be posed by farmers throughout the country. A few weeks ago we had the Parliamentary Secretary to the Government, Deputy O'Donovan, going into a built-up area and loudly boasting that the ill-gotten gains which had been wrung from the farmers by another section of the community were being passed on to the consumer. He went further and promised another slashing for the unfortunate producer. Thanks to Providence, those promises were short-lived. Time and time again, the present Minister for Agriculture, having left office, expressed his worries and misgivings about his successor, Deputy Walsh. Over and over again I have heard him repeating to different audiences in my own constituency that, psycho-physically, he thought that Deputy Walsh was a very timorous and weak man. We are now in a position to measure one Minister against his former colleague.
I would ask Deputies to visualise the Cabinet meeting which fixed last year's price. We can see there Deputy Walsh —this timorous little man—fighting as a farm producer, fighting a Cabinet in which I have no doubt there was a very pinched and penurious Minister for Finance; we can see him fighting interests in that Cabinet which were purely non-agricultural, interests one would expect to exert the kind of influence one would expect from their political background. Yet, we had Deputy Walsh, as Minister for Agriculture, offering, after a normal year, a price of 82/6 per barrel. At least he can claim the credit that he wrung from his Government that price of 82/6 per barrel for wheat.
Who wrung whom on the 22nd of last January?
Deputy Moher on the motion.
I will tell the Deputy.
I refuse to be diverted, but I would remind the Minister again of his promise. I had a number of very close contacts with the Minister. My constituency is a constituency largely made up of small farmers, mixed farmers. In the area in which I live there is one of the largest creameries in the country and the average farm there, reckoned by the number of dairy cows, is a nine-cow holding. The Minister went down there and he promised gooseberries for Christmas to the small farmers.
All over the country, particularly in County Kilkenny, we had the Minister saying: "Let the farmers of Ireland travel with me along the inter-Party road for the next five years and I promise I will dazzle them with prosperity." To-day the small farmers are discouraged and disillusioned. But there is one difference: on that particular occasion the Minister was the crowing cock of the Fine Gael Party. To-day he sits on the benches opposite, the plucked rooster of the inter-Party Government.
The cock will crow again.
And his farmer supporters sit behind him looking very much like farmyard hens after a winter shower.
(Interruptions.)
Deputy Moher on the motion.
The Minister for Agriculture has of late made much play by calling in representative groups of farmers, in particular the representatives of Macra na Feirme. I am sure the Minister is aware that within that group there is a grain committee. I wonder did he call in that committee? Did he consult with them? Did he try to get agreement from them before he slashed the price of wheat? That is a question I would like the Minister to answer when he comes to reply. Again, both in this House and outside it we have seen the Minister sweat foam and froth many a time because of the price of fertilisers. He yelled across the floor at me: Did I agree that a 20 per cent. tax on fertilisers and phosphates when imported by collective groups of farmers was a fair price?
And did you?
He has had a long time since in which to wreak his wrath and vengeance on his colleague, the Minister for Industry and Commerce. What has he done about it? That was a national issue among small farmers at the last election and it is a major factor in their production. Fertilisers here, as compared with the prices for which they are available in Denmark, means in terms of wheat something like a charge of 3/- a barrel.
Whose fault is that? Who put the tax on?
And what are you doing about it? Instead of giving fertilisers you are slashing the farmer's foot.
You put the tax on.
We had many times the amusing description of what the Minister found in Johnstown Castle—the churn and the bicycle wheel.
No. That was in Ballyhaise. It was a medicine bottle.
I beg your pardon. Is it now the policy of the Minister to eradicate the combine? Must he send the gentle maiden with her sickle to the wheat fields? Is not that very much what he is doing? He is trying to stop the march of time, put back the hands of the clock, to take the combine from the fields, when every farmer in the country knows that the one great godsend, the one great boon to the acute labour problem which exists in the country is the combine. And now the Minister says, "Fair maiden with thy sickle return to the wheat fields." But perhaps I am exaggerating.
Oh no. Not at all.
We revert to the old orthodox method of the reaper and binder and of the stacks in the fields where the destruction from vermin amounts to from 7/- to 10/- a barrel says the O.E.E.C. report. And again, for those who are fastidious, a return to the storing of wheat in stacks and ricks means there is a continuous fouling of the grain by vermin. That is another factor that has to be taken into consideration. There is always and forever in existence the danger of Weil's disease from rat infested stacks.
I think the rate has to bite you before you can contract Weil's disease.
What is the position of the farmers and the farming contractors who have gone into the credit corporations and into the banks and who have gone steadily and substantially into debt? Remember—and the figures are available—that most of the debt was contracted within the last couple of years and those people now find that they are prevented from recouping the capital which they invested and are irretrievably being driven completely out of business. And, again, do the representatives of labour in this inter-Party Government study the repercussions from the diminution in wheat acreage? Does this not mean substantial unemployment among lorry drivers and lorry owners? Can we not assume that C.I.E. and those people employed in the mills are going to have unemployment? Can we not assume that in the fertiliser factories there will be a considerable reduction in employment? Can we not assume that in the very big grain-receiving depots there will also be unemployment? In my home town there is a depot which gives employment to 60 or 70 workers in the grain season and on a permanent basis 25 or 30.
These are factors which must be considered. I would ask the Minister what the effect of the destruction of the wheat policy would be on grass. I have stated in this House before that a sensible approach would have been rotational grain and grass production. One thing that grain-growing would do is that it would cause to be ploughed up land all over the country in which all the productive grasses had died. Tillage would have helped to rid the fields of the Yorkshire fog and Goulaher, beal-a-gorm and other non-productive grasses. In that way, wheat-growing would have very favourable repercussions on milk and beef production as the Minister is very well aware if he has studied the conditions in the grass areas. I was glad to see some of the grass areas ploughed up because everybody knows that if our dairying economy is wasteful, our beef economy is many times more wasteful. If we are to get the maximum in beef we can get it only through improving our grass in the beef areas. That can be done, and a very suitable way of doing it is by having grain and grass rotating. I have said over and over again that the only real wealth a farmer can own is the accumulated fertility in his soil.
Hear, hear!
When the other sections of the community—the non-agricultural sections—were faced with starvation when this island of ours was an island besieged, the farmers of the country were called in to take the front-line trenches. They dissipated the reserves of fertility in their land without having fertilisers to put in. They dissipated the accumulated reserve of fertility they had in order to save the non-agricultural community from starvation. And now, a very short time afterwards, when the farmers should have all the sympathy of every section of the community, they are being deprived of an opportunity to restore the fertility in their farms—which they so magnanimously and so generously gave in time of crisis. I am no financial wizard but I wonder did the Minister and the Government examine what the repercussions would be if this price was instrumental in killing wheat-growing? Did the Minister and the Government think of the position that would arise if we were forced to pay with dollars for the bulk of our wheat from the hard currency countries? These are all factors which should be considered. I do not intend to labour this thing much further, but I would say to the Government: "You cannot have one policy for the industrialists, for the millers, for the non-agricultural consumer and another for the farming section of the community." No Government will stand or stay very long in office that will attempt to make the farmer the pack mule or the sweated coolie for the non-agricultural interests in this country.
I need only recall a meeting early in 1951 when the present Minister attended the Engineers' Hall, Dawson Street, when he faced at the annual general meeting of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society a very irate group of farmers. That was in the last days of the last inter-Party Government. I can recall the words used by the Minister to try to coo and to coax those irate farmers. He said: "You are breaking behind me. You will trample me under but I will go back behind the counter and earn that miserable pittance of £1,500 a year or whatever it was which you gave me as Minister for Agriculture." Does the Minister recall? Am I not quoting the exact words he used?
Scarcely, Deputy.
I warn the Minister that the same conditions now exist and that those irate farmers will rise up as they did in the spring of 1951 and depose him.
I can in any case congratulate Deputy Moher that the resonance of his voice has in no way diminished since 1951. I will deal first, Sir, with two or three points that were raised by Deputy Moher and by Deputy Beegan.
Deputy Moher expressed apprehension lest there should develop in this country a reduction in the total cereal acreage. Let me tell him that it is our purpose to double that acreage and we believe it can be profitably done. I propose to-day to tell him how. Deputy Moher proposes to our belief to-day that the combine is the greatest instrument for eliminating labour from the land.
On a point of correction, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle.
If the Minister gives way.
Of course.
What I did say was a very different statement. I do not want to be misquoted or to have what I said misinterpreted. What I did say was that the combine was the solution to a very acute labour problem—a very acute labour problem—in the grain-growing areas. That is a very different statement from that made by the Minister.
It is the old story of whether the hen comes before the egg or the egg comes before the hen. I think what Deputy Moher, in any case, says is that when there are very few labourers on the land the combine is a great blessing for the farmer who is without labourers on his land. Is not that so? I remember the time when I used to be told that the wheat policy was designed to multiply the number of agricultural workers employed on the land. You pays your money and you takes your choice. I hope I do Deputy Moher no injustice, but it seems that when it suits Deputy Moher to say at the cross-roads that he is urging the employment of more and more men on the land and that the policy he advocates of 82/6 a barrel for wheat is designed to employ men on the land, that is scarcely consistent with the proposition so resonantly put forward by him to-day that the combine is the most valuable instrument available to a farmer who has the fewest labourers on the land.
There is one thing about Deputy Moher's speech with which I entirely agree. I used to say that the farmer's function was to get from his land the maximum return for himself and his wife and family, always provided that he left his land in autumn a little better than he found it in the spring. I am gratified to learn that Deputy Moher has so often listened to me at meetings. Perhaps he has heard me in East Cork laying down that doctrine.
Deputy Moher says to-day that the only wealth a farmer can have really is the accumulated fertility of his soil. I wonder how much accumulated fertility was left in the 1,000 acres of conacre that were put under wheat in County Dublin and County Kildare, of which I will read out particulars before I sit down here to-day.
I am not speaking for the County Dublin 1,000 acres.
No, but I am going to tell Deputy Moher the consequences of the policy that he advocates. There is no use going out on the land and sowing praiseach and then, when the praiseach comes up, saying: "Oh well, I never meant to plant praiseach" but, if you planted it, it would be there.
A red herring.
It was not red herrings that we had growing on the land. Deputy Beegan says that super is going up 10/- a ton.
I said I was told it by merchants.
Who is going to put it up? I would like to know.
Who is going to take it down?
Wait a minute. Fianna Fáil put up the tariff on super. Do not let us forget that.
And you said——
Wait a minute. I did not interrupt anybody who was speaking. I listened to you all.
Oh yes, you did.
It is one thing to put a tariff on but it is quite another thing to take it off. If Deputy Lemass goes out to the country and warns unfortunate men working in fertiliser factories that this is the only thing that stands between them and the dole—permanent unemployment—it is not so easy to carry conviction to those men's minds that Deputy Lemass is not speaking the truth. Fianna Fáil put it on and Fianna Fáil created the situation in which Deputy Beegan can tell me across the House that he knows they are going to put on 10/- a ton more. Who is? I want to know. Deputy Beegan says he knows.
I said I was told it by merchants and they told it to many a one as well as to me.
Deputy Moher tells me that the Dane and the Belgian and Luxembourg can get super at £3 a ton cheaper than our farmers can get it. Ask Deputy Moher. That is what he tells me.
How much is potash going up?
Fianna Fáil is very fond of making dirty messes and then jeering at those whose unfortunate assignment it is to succeed them for the purpose of cleaning them up. Deputy Beegan asks why is the escalator principle introduced at all into the guaranteed price for wheat. I will tell you. There is no secret about it. I felt that farmers were put to desperate inconvenience as a result of the attempt being made to handle all the wheat in six or eight weeks when the harvest came in and that, if we could introduce a system where it could pay at least certain categories of farmers who were in a position to do so to stack their wheat and hold it back so as to let those who were not in a position to do that to get their wheat handled, it would be a useful thing to do. In so far as the principle is concerned, I think I am right in saying that every organised body of farmers with whom I discussed it agreed that the principle was a good one if we could make it work.
And you are satisfied that the amount you are giving is a sufficient amount of compensation?
I am satisfied about nothing but, after 20 years floundering around with this problem, I am trying to do something to put it right. If this degree of escalator in the price does not succeed in putting it right, I am quite prepared to consider an adjustment in order to procure the end we all want. That is the principle. You asked me why it was brought in and that is the answer.
Now, Deputy Beegan says, why did you give a premium on wheat delivered in December and January when you knew that the quantity of wheat delivered in December and January is negligible? That is the very reason we gave the escalator price for these months, because we wanted the quantity delivered in these months substantial so as to relieve the months in which the bulk of the crop is at present delivered.
Deputy Beegan then grew philosophical and said that some people complained of individuals speculating on wheat. Said Deputy Beegan: "Well, this is a free country and any man is entitled to speculate on anything." Is he? Does Fianna Fáil accept that proposition? Does Fianna Fáil accept the proposition that a gentlemen is entitled to come into this country, to take 1,000 or 1,200 acres of conacre land, to tear it up, sow it in wheat, get a contractor to plough it and sow it and fertilise it, and make a deal with the contractor to come back on the first available day after the 1st September to combine it and leave the straw standing in the field and deliver the wheat? He never saw the wheat; he never handled the wheat; he would not know wheat if he did see it and he hoped to collar the "boodle". Does Deputy Beegan say that that is a kind of speculating that ought to be encouraged in what he calls a free country?
I did not say any such thing.
I beg the Deputy's pardon. I think the Deputy was philosophising in vacuo, but unfortunately I am not permitted in my position to philosophise in vacuo. I have to philosophise in the presence of the tulips who I know are trying to bleed the public of this country.
You just do the comedian as usual.
Talk about the small farmers now.
The Minister must be allowed to make his speech without interruption.
He is not making a speech.
Deputies will get every opportunity to speak on this motion.
It would clarify the situation if the Minister would give the approximate number of these gentlemen who have come in here and taken conacre.
I am only just beginning. Deputy Beegan says that, taking the average farmer up to £30 valuation, he recognises that, if he is a wheat grewer, the reduction in his income from wheat this year will not exceed £15. I think we would be able to make that up to him and a great deal more, with the help of God, before this day twelvemonth.
By soft talk.
It is not so soft with you.
Let us come down to tin tacks. Has anybody in the House, has Deputy Moher, asked himself this question: Why was the moving of this motion left to the back benchers of the Fianna Fáil Party?
The farmers of the Fianna Fáil Party.
We all understand and sympathise with the absence of Deputy Walsh—if he were here, he would have a right to join in the discussion—and we hope to see him back restored to health as soon as may be; but the ex-Taoiseach, Deputy de Valera, is there. Deputy Aiken is there; and Deputy Ryan and Deputy Derrig are there. Deputy Lemass, although he has the most brazen countenance in the Fianna Fáil Party, has fled the House, and I do not blame him. Is the case made here to-day not that Fianna Fáil is shocked to the heart's core by any development calculated to reduce the acreage of wheat? May I read for the edification of the House the decision taken by the Fianna Fáil Government on January 22nd, 1954? It reads:—
"I am to refer to the memoranda dated 18 instant submitted by the Minister for Agriculture and by the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Industry and Commerce relative to the policy of the growing of wheat and to inform you that the Government, at a meeting held to-day, 22nd January, 1954, decided that the general aim of policy in regard to the growing of wheat should be to secure an annual mill intake of 300,000 tons of dried native wheat and that the Departments concerned should forthwith consult together immediately with a view to finding solutions of the problems concerning transport, drying, storage and finances that are likely to arise in ensuring that adequate facilities will be provided on a permanent basis to handle in future years an annual crop of the magnitude represented by a mill intake of 300,000 tons of wheat."
Where is the wheat policy now?
Did you know, Deputy Moher, that you were committed to that?
Committed to what?
Did you know that you yourself were committed to a rigid limitation of the acreage of wheat in this country?
I do know one thing——
Did you know it?
I do know one thing— it was a price of 82/6 as against 75/-.
Did the Deputy know that? Did Deputy Beegan know that? Did Deputy Moher or Deputy Beegan tell the people down the country that they were putting their finger in their eye? Come now—there is an end of fraud in this country. Let us have an end of fraud and let us have an end of "cod" on our people. Tell the people the truth.
(Interruptions.)
The Minister for Agriculture is entitled to make his statement and these interruptions must cease.
He does not want to.
He is only a fraud.
I thought they would not like it. No hypocrite ever goes out to appear before our people as a whited sepulchre and rejoices in having the rags of indecency torn off him, as I will tear them off the Fianna Fáil Party now. A common fraud! How was it going to be done? How was the acreage going to be brought down? Can any Deputy tell me? How were you going to do it? Were you going to restore the army of inspectors that Deputy Smith proposed wherewith to line the farmer's ditch and break down his gates if he dared to grow a rood in excess of the quota of wheat you allocated to him? Come—tell us? Were you going to send out the compulsory tillage inspectors again to go into every farmer's farm in Ireland and tell them: "You may sow a rood; you may sow an acre; you may sow 100 acres; and you may sow 1,000 acres." Was that the way you were going to do it, and, if you were not going to do it that way, how were you going to do it? I have given you the decision —it is not a proposal. If I chose to emulate the example of Deputy Aiken and walk in here to read confidential minutes of Ministers on this file——
You did it before.
——by heavens, I would shame you before the nation, but I am not going one inch beyond the recorded decision of the Government. Listen to me—there are eight of you in this, eight movers of the motion. There are four ex-Ministers on the Front Bench. Deputy Beegan was grieving that the inter-Party Government had not more farmers in it. Would you look at the four farmers on the Front Bench—four decent men but divil a much and ever adhered to their boots!
However, let us turn from that. How were you going to do it? There was your decision to limit the acreage. You were not, according to yourselves, going to send out the compulsory tillage inspectors again; you were not going to line the farmers' ditches with Civic Guards; you were not going to recruit the full of five fields of inspectors; you were not going to break down their ditches and burst open their gates as you did in 1946 and 1947. How are you going to do it? Riddle me that. I invite the six gentlemen who follow Deputy Moher and Deputy Beegan to riddle me that. They are looking pretty sick.
It is no wonder we are sick.
No wonder at all.
We have the liberty ships.
I have the greatest sympathy for the poor boys who put down the motion and never knew about that. Why did they not ask Deputy Dr. Ryan? Why did they not ask Deputy Aiken? Why did they not ask Deputy MacEntee? Why did they not ask Deputy Lemass? Why did they not ask their own leader, Deputy de Valera, to put his name to that motion?
Mr. de Valera
As far as I was concerned, my belief is that those whom the shoe pinches know best where it does pinch.
You are telling me. Oh boys, look at their faces! The shoe is pinching terribly tight but the four patriarchs in front are as bland as could be because they have not the shoe on. They took damn good care not to put it on because they knew it was going to pinch on the 22nd January, 1954. You might have told poor Deputy Moher and poor Deputy Beegan so that they would not look so crestfallen now that the cat is out of the bag.
It is only beginning.
You might have even gone up behind Deputy Moher and murmured "Puss, puss." He would at least have anticipated that the cat was going to come out of the bag and he might have inquired what the cat was. The House is entitled to ask me, as representing the Government, why we fixed the price at 70/- per barrel for wheat bushelling 63 lb. It was because we believe that those farmers in this country who have gone into the practice of growing wheat and desire to grow wheat and who depend on it as a cash crop were entitled to have from their Government a fair profit on wheat that they grew and an ample margin above the world price available for wheat. Accordingly, the price of 70/- was fixed.
I would ask Deputies of this House to remember that, as evidence of the desire of this Government to give farmers security in this matter, we fixed the price not for one year but for two years. That has never been done before. I want to ask Deputies what margin do they think is fair between the price that should obtain at home for wheat grown in Ireland and the international price of wheat in the markets of the world? I want to tell the House that the margin fixed by this Government is between 15/- and 20/- per barrel in favour of Irish wheat. I think that is a fair one. I think if you guarantee to our farmers that they shall get in any cereal year from 15/-to 20/- per barrel, that is £6 to £8 a ton more than the world price for wheat, our farmers are getting a fair price for their product. I do not believe that the farmers of this country will fail to understand that and to appreciate the policy that we are concerned to put before them.
I want the House to consider as deliberately as they can the policy by its results. I have often said in public before that the best test of policy is results. I want to apply that test and none other to the policy of the inter-Party Government as opposed to the policy of Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil, I concede it at once—I wish Deputy Moher would not go away.
I will be back in a minute.
You will be very welcome. Fianna Fáil fixed 82/6 a barrel for wheat bushelling 63 lb. and over. What is the result of that? What has been the result of that? Do not let us forget that at the same time that Fianna Fáil fixed that price for Irish wheat they signed the International Wheat Agreement which binds this Government now throughout this year and next year to accept delivery of 270,000 tons of wheat whenever anyone wants to tender that quantity of wheat to us at the minimum price of one dollar fifty-five f.o.b. Port Arthur for No. 1 Manitoba wheat. That liability attaches to me now. Between now and the 31st July any person in the International Wheat Agreement who desires can compel this country to accept this wheat and pay for it by virtue of the International Wheat Agreement.
Fianna Fáil then fixed this price for domestic wheat. It had two remarkable and immediate results. I do not blame anybody for the confusion that the unprecedentedly bad harvest brought upon us. On the contrary, I think we have every reason to congratulate ourselves that we came out of those difficulties as well as we did. Here are two astonishing problems. The first of them is the emergence for the first time in our history of an entirely new type of person.
In the County Dublin three individuals harvested or tried to harvest over 1,000 acres of wheat each, and of that 60 per cent. was conacre land. I ask Deputies to think about what this means. The wheat price at 82/6 represented approximately a subsidy of £8 per acre to the man who grew wheat. These three individuals between them collected £24,000 in subsidy from the Irish Exchequer. In the County Dublin three other individuals had each between 500 and 1,000 acres of wheat. In each case, a large proportion of it was conacre land. In addition to that, there were 16 persons in the County Dublin and each of them had between 100 and 500 acres of wheat. Most of them—certainly half of them— were limited liability companies, some of which in my judgment were clearly established for the purpose of making a killing out of the guaranteed wheat prices.
I hope the Minister for Lands is listening to this.
I think he is.
I listened to a lot of tripe that the Deputy came out with
We come to Kildare. In Kildare, we have one grower with between 500 and 1,000 acres of wheat. We have 24 individuals in the County Kildare with between 100 and 500 acres of wheat. In Louth, we have at least ten, each one of them having from 100 to 500 acres of wheat. In Meath, we have one combine who have between 500 and 1,000 acres and we have 11 with between 100 and 500 acres of wheat. In Kilkenny, we have 23 individuals with between 100 and 500 acres of wheat. In Tipperary, five, and in Carlow, eight. Does the Dáil consider that a development of that type of agricultural activity is of any advantage to anyone in this country? On every one of these larger holdings you had three or four combines working. The amount of labour employed was negligible. In many cases the proprietor of that growing grain never saw the grain: it was planted by a contractor, the ploughing and harrowing was done by the contractor, and he came back with combines in the autumn and proceeded to drag it out as best he could. Is that desirable for agriculture? If it is, I recommend to the Dáil, if that is what they want, to renew the same price for wheat next year and you will have 20 times as many of that kind of operator in the field then as you have now; and all those fellows avowedly are hoping to get back what they failed to collect, if we give them another chance. Do you want to do that?
Suppose these fellows were an inseparable feature of a good agricultural policy, I would be inclined to say: "We are not living in Paradise and you have to take the fat with the lean, and if you have a few parasites on a good plan I would advise you to put up with it." But what is the result of this policy? Does it mean an expanded acreage of cereal production? It does not. The astonishing part of it is that as wheat went up oats and barley have gone down. Now look at the position we are in, and it is a grotesque position, in my opinion. We have a very large accumulated stock of wheat in very poor condition, much of it saved off the kinds of farms I have described. We have no feeding barley.
And no wonder.
I agree, no wonder.
What else would you expect?
Who would grow feeding barley when you can get 84/- for wheat? We have no oats and we have not enough malting barley. I am now faced with the obligation to issue licences to bring in Iraquian barley for feed, to bring in Canadian barley for roasting or to close the breweries down; and I must give men licences to bring in oats from Scotland or close down every oatmeal mill in the country. Was there ever a dafter policy—that wiped out oats, wiped out barley and furnished us with an abundance of a crop which, unfortunately, at the moment is in very bad condition? Surely common sense and prudence should suggest to us a policy that would get for us such a quantity of wheat as we wanted, sufficient barley to make imports of barley unnecessary for malting or feeding and that would produce on our own land the oats we are going to import from Scotland in order to keep the oatmeal mills open? Which is the best policy? I think the policy I advocate is the best one—I think it is much better than the Fianna Fáil one—and that is to bring the three of the cereal crops into some kind of rational relationship so that you can get a fair proportion of all.
There is no use arguing that the desirable thing to do is to lift the price of all cereal crops indefinitely. In so far as feeding oats and feeding barley are concerned, they are the raw materials of our live stock, and livestock products export industry. As Deputies know, if you extinguish the margin of profit for the pig feeder of West Cork he just does not feed pigs and if he does not feed pigs we will not export bacon or pork and we will have to close down our bacon factories—as we did have to close them down, until they were opened again by the inter-Party Government after the Pigs and Bacon Agreement of 1951. Knock the profit out of pigs and the bacon factories will close down for the want of pigs to slaughter. I cannot control the price of pigs or bacon on the world market.
We seem to be getting away from the question of wheat.
On to barley and oats— and that is where I am trying to lift the Fianna Fáil Party.
18/- a cwt. for barley.
20/- was the minimum paid.
18/- was all you would allow.
20/- was paid—and, as Deputy Moher will tell you, they paid up to 23/- and 24/- for good feeding barley in the City of Cork—and if he could tell me he was mistaken in that I think he would be the last to keep silent. Look at the angelic smile he has.
The Minister is a first-class showman.
Have I not spoken the truth? All I am trying to bring out is the difference between what we stand for. Put it there on the Table and let the country judge between the two. As far as I am concerned, I want that judgment to be made. This Government's agricultural policy is founded on the aphorism: "One more cow, one more sow, and one more acre under the plough." Our purpose is to evoke from the farmers a greater acreage and a greater supply of oats and barley which we can profitably process and convert into meat, bacon, pork and whatever else you can find a profitable market for.
I would remind Deputy Moher of this, that when he sings the praises of the combine for eliminating labour from the land, there is no combine that will feed a pig or attend a pig when she farrows, there is no combine that will look after a cow or remove the manure by machinery. If you have live stock and if their production and fattening is proceeding on the land of Ireland, there must be human hands employed to do the work, so long as it pays a profit. It will not be fair maids with reaping hooks that will do it. I am not sending our people anywhere, but I am asking them to look on cattle and pigs as the two most efficient machines we have for processing the corn crops of Ireland and the grass growth that should follow thereon. I think it is a good policy, and accordingly it is the intention of this Government to provide a guaranteed price for wheat and to secure for the farmers of this country a minimum price for feeding barley. It is the intention of this Government to interview the oatmeal millers of this country forthwith and point out to them that the time has come for them to do their duty and to make contracts for the production of oats by our farmers on Irish land, which they are at present asking me to admit under licence from the land of Scottish farmers. We are giving a fair price for the man who grows wheat, not a profit that induces a man from the Continent of Europe to come into this country, take 1,000 acres in conacre from £25 to £30 per acre and grow wheat upon it.
He will not come back.
He is no fool. That is what they pay for an Irish acre upon which to grow wheat.
He would be a damn fool.
They did not think they were fools. Is it better to fix a price which will give the farmer who grows that crop in regular rotation a fair profit and to go and say to him: "If you want to grow barley, and are so circumstanced that you can, we will facilitate you in growing it, and will guarantee that you will not get less than 40/- a barrel for it. If you get more you are welcome"? If we go to the oat miller and say: "Estimate your requirements of oats and go to the farmers as the Beet Company or the maltster goes and make your contract with them for so many barrels of oats," would that not be a better policy than paying 82/6 for wheat for the benefit of the 1,000 acre or 500 acre farmer? If we bring that within the reach of Deputy Beegan's man who, he says, is going to lose £15 in his gross income this year, will he not make up the £15 involved, by his access to that diversification, if he puts in one pair of pigs? On every farm of £30 valuation where the farmer feels himself bereft by the reduction of £15 in price for his three acres of wheat, he can correct that by putting in one pair of pigs for which he will have a profitable market—and there is no £8 per acre subsidy on them. Is that not the better policy? I think it is.
I do not want to depart, however, from some of the arguments that have been put forward. I know there was an arresting list of prices paid by other countries in Europe for wheat. I know that that impressed a number of men who were in perfectly good faith. I know that when men read that Turkey was paying 94/5 a barrel for wheat and that Portugal was paying a similar amount per barrel to their people, some people said: "Is it not a queer thing that our Government would pay only 67/6?" These people do not stop to think. Did they ever think that the moisture content of the Iraquian barley which is grown not 100 miles from Turkey averages 12 per cent.? The moisture content of wheat grown in Ireland averages 23 per cent., but that is not all. Did the pundits who put these figures before our people ask themselves what the average yield per acre in Turkey and Portugal of wheat was? The average yield in Turkey is 9.9 cwt. per acre; the average yield in Ireland is 23.3 cwt.
The Turks would have to pay nearly 200/- a barrel for wheat on their yield before their people would be paid a comparable price with what the Irish farmer was getting for his product. The Portuguese are paying 94/5 per barrel. Does anyone realise what their average yield is? 7.2 cwt. per acre is the average yield of wheat in Portugal. If the Portuguese wanted to pay a price to their farmers comparable to the price our farmers receive they would have to pay 210/- per barrel. Do Deputies understand that? When "Pop" laughs we all laugh. I have the greatest admiration for a disciplined Party. Keep watching the signals and then you will not go wrong.
We know our Max Baer.
Let us get back to the motion.
I shall get back to anything to avoid having to contemplate the horrible spectacle of Deputy Collins —anything. I think these figures are relevant and important. I think it is wrong to mislead our people by the pretence that the price paid by the Irish Government for wheat grown in Ireland is the lowest price in Europe, in any true sense of that term. Come, let us compare like with like. Let us compare the conditions obtaining in Ireland with the conditions obtaining in France. France is paying 96/- per barrel for wheat. Here the average yield is 16.9 cwt. from the acre. Is it unfair for me to say that if France were to give the same price to their farmers as we are giving to our farmers France would require to be paying nearly 105/- per barrel for wheat to treat them as like with like? Do Deputies appreciate the fact that France, having paid 96/- per barrel for wheat to her farmers is, at the present time, selling it in London to the British millers at 50/- to 55/- per barrel delivered into a British mill at an average moisture content of 15 per cent.?
I ask the House to remember this. This year, if Providence had blessed us with a good harvest, we could easily have had an exportable surplus of wheat from our own resources and, on top of that, we could have had 270,000 tons of wheat delivered to us which we would also have had to sell in whatever foreign market we could get. The French are selling in the best market they can get, and they are delivering at 15 per cent. moisture content to London and the west coast of England at 50/- to 55/- a barrel, having paid freight on it from France and having paid storage facilities on it in France. France has her colonies and her accumulated wealth. England has her great industrial national income from which she can draw funds to subsidise agriculture in any way she likes. The United States of America has all the resources creation put upon the earth from which to finance any price stabilisation policy she chooses to enunciate. Do not let us forget that Ireland has 12,000,000 acres of arable land and the people who live on it and nothing else. It is that which is setting the standard of living for every individual in this country whether they live in town, city or countryside. And after 25 years' argument, we have brought Deputy Lemass out to the Publicity Club to say that after 30 years in the public life of this country he has discovered that, too. I must try, as my predecessor and his predecessor before him have done, to help the people who are living on the land of Ireland to get, not for themselves alone but for us all, the standard of living we enjoy and, more than that, the raw materials and the means to provide industrial employment for between 100,000 and 200,000 of our people who if they are not thus employed must go elsewhere to seek a living. Bear this in mind, that if we fail to export agricultural produce profitably, it is not the farmer who will feel the first blast. When we have not the means to pay for the raw materials of industrial employment, the man who is thrown out of work in the cities and towns has no cottage to go home to where he would at least find milk, eggs and oatmeal to assist him over the lean period; he has nothing to go home to but his unemployment pay.
I ask the farmers of this country with full confidence to come with us in the prosecution of an agricultural policy that will get a decent living for us all. I know there are Fianna Fáil Deputies sitting on the benches opposite me now who know I am right. I know there are Deputies on the Fianna Fáil Benches who are not sitting there because they have not the brazen-faced impudence to face me across this House and claim they think I am not right. They have agreed with me but when "Pop" walks down the lobby they will all trot after him and I do not blame them. I am a party man too.
Not for long.
If there were five or six of my colleagues who put their names to a miserable resolution like this, I would travel a long way to stick by them while they were in their trouble.
You will walk the plank, too.
Nobody over there will chance walking the plank.
Thanks be to goodness the day is gone when they were able to wreak their spite on others by making them walk the plank. I want the support of Oireachtas Éireann for our policy but much more I want the support of the farmers in this country. I think I will get the former and I am certain I will get the latter. This day 12 months, I will invite this House to judge our policy by results and if I have nothing better to produce than that list of speculators, if I have nothing better to produce than applications for licences to import barley from Iraq—for we have none in Ireland—and oats from Scotland, because we have none in Ireland, to feed our pigs and open our distilleries and breweries, then I will quit the job I have now. If I were responsible for a policy that resulted in the tale I have told to-day I would be ashamed to be Minister for Agriculture in this country. But I am not responsible for that story. I am not responsible for that scandal. I am not responsible for the humiliation that we have to seek in Iraq and Scotland what we might so profitably have grown here while we fatten the speculators on the conacre land of Ireland and, as Deputy Moher pointed out, provide them with hammer and jemmy to plunder the soil of this country of its fertility and to fly this country with their evil-gotten swag.
I remember the time when it used to be said by Cumann na nGaedheal that wheat could only be grown in this country at the point of a gun. The Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Dillon, supported by the Labour Party, is now loading a machine-gun in order to prevent farmers growing it. Deputy Dillon's speculators can be dealt with without robbing the farmers of this country who till a reasonable proportion of their land, with a reasonable proportion of it under wheat, of a fair price for their product.
What guarantee has the Minister for Agriculture to offer to the farmers of this country that if his policy succeeds in putting wheat up the spout—and that is what I believe he has in mind, of reducing it to the 21,000 acres we had before—what guarantee has he that he will be able to sell the alternative product from that land for sufficient to buy the wheat that should have been grown on it? Deputy Dillon is now guaranteeing the farmers that if they follow his policy he will double tillage in two years.
What did he do during the three years he was in the Coalition Government? He reduced the tillage by 1,000,000 acres. This policy that he is laying down to-day is inevitably bound to lead to a great reduction in the meagre amount of tillage that we have in this country at the present time. If we are to produce from our soil the maximum to sustain our people, either for direct consumption or for sale for the things we require, we want to have a reasonable amount of tillage. We have got to turn over our soil, to get rid of the weed-infested pastures and to plant them with good grasses at the end of a proper rotation. Let us examine this matter from the narrow point of view of economics—this policy of getting rid of wheat production and, by some manner of means, raising the £15,000,000 or the £20,000,000 that the foreigners may charge us for the 500,000 tons of wheat that we must import in order to feed our people. Let us examine this proposition, because that is where this policy is leading us. That is where the Minister for Agriculture wants it to lead: he has never made any secret of it.
It is your own plan.
This year, we have probably had 450,000 acres of land under wheat——
490,000.
What would that give us this year? Even if there had been a good harvest, I calculate that it would not have given us the wheat we require for human consumption plus the wheat we require for next year's seed. Let us say, however, that up to 500,000 acres were under wheat this year. What are we going to do with that 500,000 acres in future if we cut out wheat-growing, if we can kill wheat growing? Take the farmer who has grown wheat and got a few pounds' profit per acre out of it. Consider the case of such a farmer who puts that land back into grass. If he can get a bullock at a good price he will be very lucky if he increases the value of that bullock by £20 within a year on the two acres. It would be good going. On those same two acres, even at the price at which we have to import wheat— £29 or £30 a ton—the farmer could have produced as much wheat as would have saved our importing two tons at £30 a ton. Therefore, from the farmer's point of view and from the point of view of the country, it amounts to this. We put back into grass 500,000 acres in order to produce an extra £20 worth of bullock on every two acres, and we import wheat at £30 a ton or £60 for the two acres. We improve a bullock by £20 and we go to the British market and buy dollars —and we are £40 short to buy the same amount of wheat as could have been produced on those two acres. That is the calculation. Nobody can deny it. Why should we follow that road?
It has been proved—notwithstanding all the prognostications and prophecies made 20 years ago that wheat could not be grown, that it would dirty the land, that we could not do it except at the point of the gun—that wheat was the only crop that stood up to the most disastrous weather the Lord was pleased to send us this year. We hope He will be more favourable in the future to us and to the rest of Europe. However, this year it was proved that, if we want to grow a cereal crop that will stand up to the utmost hardship that anybody can conceive, wheat is the crop to grow—not barley or oats. The reason why we have a shortage of malting barley and why some has to be imported is not because we had not a sufficient crop of barley to give us all the malt we wanted. It is simply that barley would not stand up to the weather. Let us now consider oats. We all know that the crop that stood up least well to the weather of this year was the oat crop, and that if farmers succeeded in getting it cut it grew more quickly in the stook than wheat.
I do not ever want to see this again but last Sunday, the 28th November, I saw a crop of wheat standing in water not two miles from Dundalk and the head was still perfectly good. If any sort of good weather comes it can be reaped and the farmer can get a reasonable crop out of it. I want to say that, from the point of view of the ordinary farmer who tills, from the point of view of the farmer who puts 5 per cent. or 10 per cent. of his land under wheat, who has 20 or 30 or 40 per cent. under tillage, this policy of killing wheat is ruinous. From the point of view of the country, we have to get an extra £15,000,000 or £20,000,000 of exports of butter and eggs and bacon and beef in order to buy the dollars to get the wheat. Where are we going to get it?
It is easy for the Minister for Agriculture, moved by his own prejudices against this crop, to promise unlimited and profitable markets for other crops. I remember the Minister for Agriculture, in one such fit of enthusiastic, prophetical frenzy, promising every farmer's wife in the country that when she saw a chicken put its beak through an egg she could say to herself: "I know if this young chick lives to be a pullet, the price I will get for every egg she will lay." It was not three months until the price of eggs fell. Even if the Deputies on the Fine Gael Benches are so prejudiced against wheat-growing that they are prepared to throw all question of national security and all question of economics out the window, they should at least ensure a little bit of fair play for the farmers. If they are going to cut the price of wheat to the farmers, let them cut it gradually: do not have this disastrous cut of between 15 per cent. and 16 per cent. There are Deputies who are going to vote for an extra £1,000,000 or £2,000,000 for the civil servants. What would those Deputies say if the Government proposed, instead of giving this uncovenanted benefit to the civil servants, to cut them by 15 per cent.
If every civil servant who had £1,000 was cut by £150 and every civil servant who had £500 by £75 some harm would be seen in that; but that is the proposal in this case and there is no alternative offered to the farmers. We know, of course, that it is the duty of any Government to see that the commodities our people require are available at as reasonable a price as possible. A Government making up its mind on a question such as that, on the price it is prepared to offer for wheat and the period during which it will guarantee that price, should keep in mind the fact that there are two fundamental reasons for giving the farmers a fair price. The first is the question of national security. If we had not had our own wheat during the last war we would have been, or an effort would have been made to make us, a partisan of foreign powers. Of that there is no doubt. Proof of that exists. Apart from that, however, there is the question of giving the farmers a reasonable price for the crops they produce during the next year or two.
What has happened to the five year guarantee about which we heard so much during the last election and after it? What happened the five year guarantee the farmers were to get? It was indicated that that five year guarantee would be the Fianna Fáil price of 82/6 per barrel and not 70/-. What has happened to it? All round County Louth and all over every other county we heard about it. The Taoiseach announced on the radio that Fianna Fáil gave 82/6 for one year but they were going to guarantee the price for five years. What has happened this guarantee for five years?
No such promise was ever made.
I want it to be noted that the Minister for Agriculture now says on the 2nd day of December, 1954 that that was never promised by the Taoiseach, by the members of the Fine Gael Party and the other Parties.
That is not true. Deputy Aiken has said that it was promised in his constituency that the inter-Party Government would, if elected to office, pay 82/6 per barrel for wheat for five years after their election. No such promise was given. The inter-Party Government promised to give a guaranteed price for wheat to be announced in each cereal year for every one of the five years during which it is in office, and they will give it.
If there is any wheat!
What I said and what the Minister has said is on the record. We will leave it at that. Every farmer in the country knows perfectly well that what the Taoiseach said when speaking on behalf of Fine Gael over the radio was that the Fianna Fáil Government guaranteed the price of wheat a year ahead, but the Fine Gael Government would do it for five years ahead and, as proof that they would carry out their intentions, he alluded to the fact that the last time Fine Gael were in Government they had guaranteed the price for five years ahead.
The result of the farmers and others all over the country putting Fine Gael into control has been a cut in the price of wheat by 12/6 per barrel. Another result is the upset of our whole farming economy. For pity's sake, why should not the Government accept the motion, reconsider the matter and recognise that it is only fair to the ordinary farmer that he should get a fair price for his wheat? The Government is prepared to pay other people who make demands on the State.
The Minister's excuse for this escalator principle being so slow-moving as not to come into operation in the second stage until December is absolutely phoney. If the Minister had really been against the combine he would have given the farmers every possible reason to avoid combining their wheat and every encouragement to use the ordinary reaper and binder, hand-reaping or any other form of reaping, and to put their corn into stack and deliver it after the normal time of delivery by the combine. Farmers know that normally the winter wheat is ripe enough for the combine in late August or early September, and in no part of the country except in those areas above 500 or 600 feet altitude will wheat come in as late as October. Over the years, the pattern has been that it comes in the latter half of August, and from the middle of August onwards the other wheats start coming along. If the Minister had wanted to encourage the farmer to use the reaper and binder he could quite easily have increased the price in October and that would have had the result that the farmers would only have a month or so to look ahead and, with any kind of reasonable weather, the wheat could be left in hand stacks or in a rick and they would get 2/6 or 5/- a barrel extra to cover the additional cost incurred in saving it in that way as against saving it by combine.
The Deputy will agree there is a wide difference between the hand stack and the rick.
In certain circumstances. In certain circumstances the hand stack is much safer. If wheat is saved in poor weather and put into a rick in poor condition the whole of it may be lost. In bad weather you may lose the capping sheaves of hand stack, but that is all. However, that is a technical point and I will not go into it any further. If the Minister had really wanted to favour that method of harvesting as against the combine he should have moved the price upwards before December and given the farmers a premium to keep their wheat until October or November. The general experience this year in the case of farmers who reaped wheat reasonably early and put it into hand stacks or cap stooks was that there was only 18 per cent. moisture. From the point of view of saving and in connection with drying capacity and encouraging farmers to employ men rather than machines, the escalator should have started to move upwards in October and not in December. As far as January is concerned, it is of no interest to anybody. It is just a notional figure put in by the Minister to make the price look good. The Minister has succeeded effectively in reducing the price of wheat by 12s. 6d. per barrel—a cut of over 15 per cent.
As I say, Governments have to make certain that they watch the two sides of the account—what they give to the producers and what the consumers have to pay. It was the custom of Fianna Fáil, of Fianna Fáil Governments over 20 years—and which I am afraid the Coalition Governments have not followed—that when the Minister put up a proposition, every other Minister and their Departments were supposed to pick as many holes in it as they could. I believe that some of the proposals put forward by Coalition Ministers are announced at some meeting or another without prior consultation or criticism. The Minister has alluded to memoranda of the Minister for Industry and Commerce in relation to wheat prices. I wish I saw what was put up by the Department of Finance and I was in charge of the Department at that time in the absence of Deputy MacEntee.
That was not the memoranda of the 17th January, 1944?
I shall deal with that.
Mr. Flanagan
The cattle tax came into that memoranda.
I shall deal with that. I want to say that I was in charge of the Department of Finance at that time and my instructions were that as many holes as possible should be picked in any proposal put up by the Department of Agriculture or the Department of Industry and Commerce. And I gave them fair warning that I kept myself free to favour a proposal, perhaps subject to alterations. What usually happened then was that the Government knew everything possible which could be said against a proposal. Actually when the Government was considering the price of wheat or the amount of wheat to be aimed at last February or whenever it was, you had from the Department of Industry and Commerce, and from the Department of Finance of which I was in temporary charge, the greatest objection to giving any long-term guarantee for a greater acreage of wheat, but the final result of that meeting was that the Government decided in the interests of national security and for various other reasons to aim at getting at least 300,000 tons of dried wheat, which is equivalent to an acreage of 450,000 acres—more than we had ever grown at any time other than during the war. When we took the decision to step up the acreage to 450,000 we were faced by the fact that in the previous year we had only an acreage under wheat of 254,000. This has been said over and over again. It was no secret. The then Taoiseach announced it to this House; the then Minister for Agriculture announced it to the House. It was generally known throughout the country through the Fianna Fáil Party that our policy was to make certain that we should at all times have at least this 300,000 tons of dried wheat to the mills plus what we would need for seed—a produce of about 450,000 acres. Our policy and price were aimed at getting that acreage.
My belief is that instead of meeting the food requirements of our people in addition to our seed requirements, this sudden disastrous cut in wheat prices is going to drive wheat away downwards—I do not know how far: the Lord knows how far. It will depend upon an estimate by a number of farmers as to what is going to happen. Will the price of cattle be maintained? Will the price of eggs keep up and so on? It may be very disastrous and wheat production may go down to nil and if that happens we are going to be on the road with our eggs in our baskets and our sides of bacon under our arms looking for a market to sell them for £15,000,000 or £20,000,000. The Lord knows how much we will pay for our wheat because the wheat we are getting in here from America is subsidised; the price we are paying for it is a subsidised price. We do not know at what time the American public may say: "We are not going to pay this subsidy any longer." Then the Irish consumer will have to pay the American farmer the cost at which his wheat was actually produced. If we are to get out of wheat-growing, and if Europe was sufficiently foolish to do the same, the price of American wheat would not be 155 cents a bushel but 310 cents a bushel. It is not so very long ago since we had to pay dearly; this has been alluded to time and again. We had to pay £50 a ton and were glad to get it at that price at the time.
Was that to the Argentine?
Yes. We had to pay £50 because we wanted to feed our people with bread.
It was a blooming scandal.
And now we are refusing to pay not £50 a ton but 82/- a barrel —the price for which Fianna Fáil had asked them to grow it—to our own farmers. My belief is that the Minister is manoeuvring to put his old policy into effect, and he has lined up these gentlemen behind him in order to do it. I think it is a disastrous policy, and we are asking the House to force the Government to reconsider this matter by passing this motion for a review of the price fixed. We are asking the Government to reconsider it with a view to fixing a price that will give us reasonable security in the future and give the farmers a reasonable price for their product and so that our farmers will have the reasonable expectation that when Governments change there is not going to be all this sudden changing of policy which has such an ill effect upon agriculture.
Anybody who has listened to the case made by the movers of the motion and to the case made by the Minister for Agriculture must now be satisfied upon the facts. The Minister for Agriculture has set out clearly the policy of the Government in relation to the guaranteeing of a reasonable price for wheat for two years. The case made by the movers of the motion and those who spoke in support of it was that the price was made by men who had no idea of farming and that it was only a Fianna Fáil Government that was purely and truly representative of the agricultural community. They said that the price was fixed because there was not proper farmer representation in the Government. In reply to that allegation all I would say is that on a comparison of the two Front Benches there is no doubt where the representation lies, and that this inter-Party Government has a far higher percentage of farming and agricultural interests generally. There are at least a few people in this Government who have a fair knowledge of farming. I would put myself against my opposite number in the last Government as to knowledge of farming.
Who is that?
Deputy Oscar Traynor. He is just a good farmer, like the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. Deputy Aiken is a first-class farmer also.
He is.
A former Minister tells us that wheat is safer in hand stacks than in field stacks or haggard stacks or in the rick, and that that is his experience.
He said under certain circumstances.
Mr. de Valera
These things do not matter.
He asserted that it was safer. Everybody knows that you cannot reserve wheat for the winter in hand stacks.
Nobody said that.
I was listening to the ex-Minister as well as you. There is his experience of it and he tells us how to do it. He was the first speaker of former Government rank who spoke after the Minister for Agriculture and one would imagine that he would make an effort to explain how the Government's decision of January, 1954, was to be put into effect. The Minister for Agriculture challenged the former Government to show how they would reduce the acreage, to say what was their plan. He asked them to say whether they would appoint more inspectors, whether they would parcel out allotments, whether they would allow five, six or ten limited liability companies or other people who would come into the country to grow all the wheat and prohibit Deputy Beegan's farmers or Deputy Carter's farmers in Galway or Longford from growing any and provide that the only people who could grow wheat would be people with combines and the limited liability company. Deputy Aiken completely avoided that question. He tried to bring in something that he knows well had no bearing on the question put to him. He tried to create a doubt that there was some change in certain procedure in Government.
Everybody who has ever been in Government or has had anything to do with Government knows that when a memorandum is submitted by a Department it is examined by the Department affected and in particular by Finance and that, no matter who is in Government or who is out of Government, that procedure will remain. When the former Minister for External Affairs tries to say that the decision is made somewhere down the country or in some meeting place, what is he trying to prove? He is trying to assert that this Government has not the responsibility that the former Government had and that this Government did not know how to do things. Is that the way to decide the question as to what is a fair price for wheat? Yet, that is the line on which Deputy Aiken would have the House approach the matter.
As the Minister for Agriculture pointed out, because of the price that was guaranteed by the previous Government, speculators came in and attempted to batten on the people of this country and to make a million. It is not the first time it happened in the previous Government's administration that people tried to get rich quick but the vast majority of the Irish people had not that chance or opportunity. Then the Minister pointed out that, as a result of Government activities, wheat went out of proportion and that the other two essential crops for our own welfare, for the feeding even of ourselves, oats and barley, went down completely. The figures are very striking. The reduction in potatoes, barley and oats was very great. Wheat went up because the speculator was trying to make on it.
Everybody knows that if God had given us a good season, that if the moisture content of wheat was all right, that if the farmer could have saved his crop without great hardship, given good weather, a few shillings a barrel one way or the other would not matter very much. The careful farmer, the small farmer, to which class the majority of us belong, who has not the reaper or binder or combine but who has his own labour and that of his sons and daughters could, by careful handling of the crop, have saved the crop without grain loss. The reaper and binder is a rapid method of harvesting but there is grain loss when that method is employed. It is a well-known fact that the reaper and binder will lose on the field as much as a barrel and a half of grain to the acre. If men were employed, instead of the reaper and binder, there would not be such a loss. It may be contended that I am advocating a return to the old pattern of having workmen on the field. That is what I would like to see.
Back to the hook.
The hook was a great tool. If you bent your back binding the sheaf and cut with a hook instead even of a scythe you would find how splendid it was.
There would be a lot saved this year by that method.
I have done it with a hook and with a scythe and the reaper and binder. I know what I am talking about. I have seen a combine but I am not wealthy enough to own one yet. If I were to join a limited liability company with some of those who came in to batten on our people and to impoverish our land, I would put out the reaper and binder. The Minister in handling the situation has shown this year that he had a full recognition of the position.
What did he do? He increased the percentage for the moisture content, so that he assisted and came to the rescue of the hard-pressed farmer. He arranged with the millers to take it; he arranged with the millers to give a reasonable price for the unmillable wheat, and he has done everything a Minister could do in the circumstances in which he found himself, but what did that do to the people who have to get the bread? Because of the condition of the wheat this year, were it not that some importation of wheat took place, we would not have the wheat required for the grist to make the bread even eatable. Therefore, in the circumstances everything was done that should be done to keep the balance fair. Deputy Aiken very properly said that it is the duty of the Government to try to keep the balance fair between all sections of the community. That balance was kept.
I am satisfied that the policy of the Minister and of the Government relating to the price of wheat is fair and equitable. It is not as much as farmers would like to get. I know well that every farmer would like to get more for every crop, but we must bear in mind that the number of people who grow wheat to sell is only one section, that it is not every farmer who grows it and that the small farmers in particular do not grow it. When I say a small farmer, I mean the ten or 15 acre farmer and these are the overwhelming majority of the farmers of the country. Some people may argue, as indeed I did hear argued, that they are not farmers at all, but I should like to see the person who would say they are not, because they are proud of being farmers. They have the mixed farming and this year, bad and all as it was, they have been able to save every one of their crops—potatoes and all. Better than that, I know that they have their wheat in the stacks and that next year they will have it in the stacks and that the increased price for the later delivery will be a benefit to them as against the limited liability company and the fellows who came into it to get rich quick.
On a point of order, in the constituency I have the honour to represent, there are a number of good farmers who have bought combines and they are not members of a limited liability company.
That is not a point of order.
It is a point of order. It is an explanation, if you like.
Deputy Burke will not dictate to the Chair what is a point of order.
I am sorry, Sir.
The Deputy did not raise a point of order.
Of explanation.
It is a point of interruption and nothing more.
I want to protest against a Deputy getting up to make a point of order and not even attempting to make it. I submit that is disorderly conduct on the part of the Deputy.
I said so.
I know that, but I want to emphasise it. I am making my speech and I hope that Deputies will observe the rules of order. I have the Standing Orders here and I will let them have a loan of it, if they want it.
The Minister has a habit of preaching to this House.
I will try to do my best to deal with the motion before the House, and I hope I will not have to get assistance from the Deputy in doing so. The small farmers are not affected by this. It is true that a large number of farmers are, but, on the other hand, we get another section of farmers who are affected by milk, another section who are affected by beet and another section affected by the price of cattle. When one hears Fianna Fáil speaking about the wheat growers, one would think that they embraced all the agriculturists of the country. Of course, that is not true.
It embraces the beet growers.
It does affect a section of the community.
It affects the beet growers.
It affects the loaf eater.
Again, I suppose these are points of order. The Minister and the Government have set out their policy in no uncertain way—to assist the farmer who wants to make a living on the land and to keep himself and his family and his worker on a decent standard; to encourage mixed farming; and to encourage the things that are necessary to give employment on the land. We will try to continue that while we are in office. I know that, as the Minister has said, results will prove the benefit of that policy.
In the year that is passing, the farmers have had a very rough time and it is to their credit that, generally speaking, the farmers have succeeded, in 99 per cent. of cases, in saving all their crop. The only people—and I say this deliberately—who have been shouting and complaining about the Minister for Defence not making the Army available are the people who ran into the 300, 400 and 500 acre tillage of wheat. Although the small farmers beside them had their wheat saved, having paid labour to save it, a large number of these 100 acre tillage farmers who came in for the short time wanted the Army to come out and help them to save their wheat, paying the Army nothing for doing it. They wanted cheap labour.
My contention is that, if God is good to us and a good season comes, the price fixed is a reasonable one and that what we should all be doing at the moment is hoping and praying that we will have a better season next year than ever before. If we do not, if the Government fix 110/- per barrel, it will not make much difference. The weather will make all the difference and the fixing of a price of 80/- or any such figure will have no effect, if it is a bad season. If it is a good one, the price fixed will be reasonable. I have no hesitation in saying that the House should approve of the action of the Government and its Ministers and I ask the House to reject the motion because those on the opposite side of the House are not as much interested in the agricultural community as they pretend to be. The facts given by the Minister for Agriculture indicate clearly that the best interests of the country are served by the line of action he is taking in the interests of every section of the community.
I happened to be listening to Deputy MacEoin, Minister for Defence. I have a great regard for him as a man who did his bit for his country. I am sorry to say, however, that I must take exception to some of his remarks in regard to the saving of wheat. I am surprised that such a man as he should make the statement that if the farmers had gone out and employed labour with the old scythe and sickle they would save a lot. Have we now reached the stage of having to go back to the days of the scythe and sickle?
I also remember a speech made by a Deputy J. Tully of Meath, Acting General Secretary of the Federation of Rural Workers. He said that some "wheat ranchers and chancers" were this year prepared to wait until a combine was available to deal with their harvest——
These statements were not made in the House. The Deputy should confine himself to the statements made in the House on this motion. We cannot travel the whole country.
The remarks of Deputy MacEoin, Minister for Defence, would lead up to that. If I had to cut with the reaper and binder I would have had to have the corn three or four days in stooks, whereas with the combine I could send it to the mills in good condition. The Minister for Agriculture advanced no argument except to talk about the five or six ranchers who grew wheat. He is inclined to condemn the genuine farmers because of three or four ranchers. The constituency which I represent does not contain such ranchers but tillage farmers. I can tell the House that those people are not very fond of the Minister for Agriculture for giving them this price for their wheat. The Minister for Agriculture need not try to look down on us back benchers. I am proud to be a representative of the farming community. My name is appended to this motion. I am not playing politics. In view of the fact that we experienced the worst harvest in living memory, the least the farmers expect from the Minister for Agriculture is to leave wheat at this year's price and give the farmers a chance of recovery.
I heard the Minister for Agriculture over the radio say that he was going to come to the aid of the people in the Shannon valley. Would he not come to the aid of the farmers and leave the price of wheat as it is? The people whom I represent should be considered as well as the people in the Shannon valley for whom I have sympathy too.
The matter of storage is out of the question to my mind. The only safe way to store is in the straw. Could we depend on this year? Would we get a chance of putting the straw into a reek? The Minister advised the farmers to stack their straw. How many hours or days did the farmers get to allow them to save their wheat? This year with regard to labour the farmers were very glad to get it and pay any wage. There would be nothing to prevent me threshing in September in a normal year. The corn merchant would buy my corn and keep it until June or July. Would he not be in a very good way of reaping a large profit at the expense of the farmers? There is nothing to prevent the corn merchant asking a loan and saying to the bank: "I have so many tons of grain in my loft." That is the best form of security. Storage in any part of the country is out of the question. Wheat is one of the crops which cannot be stored with any good result.
If we want to have a tillage policy —and we must have it—then the farmers whom I represent want their straw to make manure. What will be the consequences to the land if the farmers have not the straw to put back into manure? They have met with serious losses on account of the amount of straw lost as a result of the cutting of the straw by the combine. Straw is very valuable from the point of view I have mentioned.
I do not think the motion was put down for political purposes. Indeed, in proof of that, one has only to take up the daily or local papers to see strong objections therein from the Minister's best supporters in regard to the price of wheat. Owing to the very bad harvest, the least we expect from the Minister is that he would leave the price of wheat as it is this year. There is no use talking about bushels or about taking the wheat to the mills. If you have 100 barrels of wheat at 33 per cent. moisture the worth of that is 51/- per barrel. That works out at £255. When dry, it represents 16 per cent. moisture and the worth is 92/6 per barrel. That equals £462 10s. Is that not a very large amount of profit for the miller? I say it is.
I had occasion during the time of the last Government to see a certain corn merchant who was very anxious to get facilities to put up a drier. He wanted no help from the Government or anybody else. He had the cash. Apparently, the millers would not allow him to put up a drier. I think those fellows should be gone after. To my mind, middlemen are living very soft at the expense of the farmers. We hear a lot about the farmers being pampered. I do not think they are, having regard to the way they have to work and their costs of production. It is all right to say: "Wait for six months." Would the Minister go to the Credit Corporation, the rate collectors and the shopkeepers and ask them to wait until the farmers can thresh? I would make a last appeal to the Minister to leave the price of wheat at last year's price for this year.
In moving this motion, Deputy Beegan referred to the labour content in the harvesting of wheat. Every Deputy realises that with the introduction of the combine, the labour content is negligible compared to other crops and cannot be compared in any way in the wide world with the growing of potatoes. Many times during the year farm labourers are engaged preparing the ground for potatoes, putting in manure, sowing the seed, raising the drills, and so on and at the end of the year they are engaged in lifting the potatoes and pitting them. Yet this year we have a considerable reduction in the acreage of potatoes. To the minds of most people, that has been caused by the fact that people have gone over to wheat as they were saved the expense involved in the labour content. Surely the ground left after a potato crop would be far better than the type of land left by the 1,000 acre grower of wheat in four or five counties in proximity to the city?
Is it not a fact that there are approximately 350,000 farmers and only about 30,000 wheat growers? Has anyone opposite given any consideration to the troubles the other 320,000 farmers have to contend with in the unfortunate weather conditions this year? They have not adverted at all to the considerable increase in the cattle population—this year there are 64,900—and at the same time we have a drop in root and grain crops of 15,400 acres and the hay acreage is reduced by 47,900 acres. Is it not a serious matter for those in the dairying areas that they should have to carry heavy stocks of cattle over the year— and a very long winter it will be to them this year, in the condition land is in and the fact that so much of the hay is of very bad quality? Is no thought being given to them by those opposite, by the people who shed crocodile tears over the 500 acre man, the 1,000 acre man and even the 100 acre man.
What guarantee is there that the small farmers will not be required to do in seven or eight years' time what they had to do in past years—try to put back into the land what was taken out in earlier years? Has any proof been provided that if this type of farm is continued the situation next year will not be still worse? There is no one across there who can contend for a moment that we will not have an aggravated number of people abusing the situation next year if that price is allowed to continue? It is an amazing situation when eight members of the Opposition Party append their names to this motion and that their leaders at no time informed them that there was a Government decision to limit the acreage of wheat.
Mr. de Valera
That is untrue.
When Deputy Moher was challenged by the Minister here this evening, he did not deny that.
Mr. de Valera
It is untrue.
It was to limit the acreage.
Mr. de Valera
That is a falsehood.
A Deputy
Read it out.
Mr. de Valera
It is an attempt at a falsehood.
Am I to be interreputed by the ex-Taoiseach? I have got my rights to speak and should not be interrupted by the ex-Taoiseach.
Mr. de Valera
Everyone has a right to accuse a falsehood.
Deputies
Sit down.
Mr. de Valera
I stood up against people like him before.
The Deputy should put his name to the motion in the first place.
The Parliamentary Secretary is entitled to speak without interruption, and he should be allowed to do so. If Deputies wish to contradict what he said, they will have an opportunity in the hour and 20 minutes left.
This Government is committed for the next two years to accept 270,000 tons of foreign wheat under guarantee, under the agreement which was made by the people who are now shouting in the opposite benches. Is it not a fact that if we had a normal harvest this year we would have to export or otherwise find some market for the excess wheat we would have here of our own production? Is there any evidence that it was ever the intention of the Party opposite if they were in office for another 20 years, to bring about the day when bread would be made in this country from all Irish wheat? Has anyone ever said that?
A few weeks ago, the Party opposite sought time here to refer to the difficulties which wheat growers had to meet this year in trying to get the mills to take their wheat, because of the glut which occurred over a very short period. Is it not a fact that, were it not for the exploiters, the farmers who normally grow wheat would have been able to secure the drying facilities for their grain and is it not so that in the course of that debate, be it to their credit, Deputies in the opposite benches complimented the Minister on this side for the way in which he handled that situation?
At this stage, I do not feel that I have anything further to add on this point. I represent a constituency roughly half of which would be intimately concerned with this, as it grows a considerable amount of wheat. My constituents certainly would not require the farmers on the western side of my constituency to subsidise those with the very good land to the extent of £8 an acre while they themselves have to face a longer winter and find that they have lost considerable crops in this unfortunate harvest. No one on the Opposition side has expressed one word in relation to their difficulties. In these circumstances, it would be very wrong of any Government to permit that type of one-sided agriculture to be carried out—a situation where the country has not sufficient barley or sufficient oats. Instead of that, the people who talk about national self-sufficiency are responsible for a situation where there are not enough foodstuffs in the country to maintain the cattle population which it is now carrying, where there is not enough barley to keep the distilleries operating and where it is necessary for this Government to place contracts abroad in order to fill the gaps created by the fact that the price for wheat last year was unreal and that the speculators came in to amass an extraordinary amount of money at the expense of the small, hard-working farmers and at the expense of the taxpayers in general.
I do not think it is necessary to have a practical knowledge of farming to be interested in the question of wheat-growing. Those of us in the Labour movement are interested, not because some of us have any practical experience of wheat-growing but because the subsidisation necessary for it has a direct effect on the economy of this country. The type of bread and the price of bread and the taxation of bread are all tied up in the question whether or not we should grow wheat, whether or not we should pay such a price that will encourage the farmers to go in for wheat-growing on an extensive scale. Nobody will disagree with me when I say that the farmers as a people are nobody's fool. They will grow what in their opinion is most suitable for their land and for their pocket.
What was the position in 1932? Speaking from memory, an article in last Sunday's Sunday Press carried a figure of 21,000 acres of wheat under cultivation. In 1932, when the last Government came into power on that occasion, by advertisement and by making the growing of wheat a national issue, and by suggestions that anyone who did not grow wheat was a traitor to the country, the figure was trebled up to 1938. From 1938 on to 1945, we had either war or rumours of war and I think all Parties agreed with wheat-growing then. Wheat was essential for the life of this community, growing was made compulsory and we were all anxious that it should be so. Even when that finished and when wheat could be got in the ordinary world markets at a considerably reduced price as compared with what we could grow it for here, the policy of growing more wheat was still insisted upon, until 1944, when we had a record crop under tillage. We certainly had a record price paid for it. The “get-rich-quick” merchants who failed to respond to the demand to grow wheat during the war years later got into land, either by securing it in conacre or in some other way. We had a wheat crop this year more than sufficient for our entire needs, with the result that, due to a contract or agreement we have, and the necessity to have our wheat turned into flour, we had to purchase a certain amount of foreign wheat to blend with our own. We have an obligation, if it is pushed on us, to take from the pool a certain amount of wheat, and we are left with a huge surplus of wheat on our hands which will be unfit for anything but feeding stuffs, and for which there will be no export market. That is the present position.
I suggest that when the economy of the country becomes so crazy and so lopsided that when a bad harvest is the best thing for the Government, the whole position of wheat-growing must be reviewed. Had we had an excellent yield, the Government would have to find increased moneys and they could only get that by further taxation. It is bad economy when you grow something and when the very fact that it grows in abundance only means increased taxation, while the fact that you have a bad harvest means a reduction for the taxpayer. I would suggest that the action of the Government and the Minister in reducing the guaranteed price was a prudent one and a well-advised one. Consequently, I am in complete disagreement with the movers of the motion, because I think that the claim that the growing of wheat gave increased employment must be dismissed. Instead of the old story that used to be thrown up in the Cumann na nGaedheal days of the man and the dog, we have now reached the stage of the man and the combine. Wheat-growing gives very little employment, except in special circumstances such as we had this year. Surely, it is not to be suggested that you should grow wheat and hope for rain so that you will have a big employment content in drying it out. That seems to be a funny policy, if it is correct.
It is also suggested that if wheat were not grown here, we would be in a bad position if war came. Wars do not spring up overnight and I cannot see for the life of me why sufficient seed wheat could not be retained in this country, and a reserve of wheat left in the country available for tillage when it is required. It seems strange to me that after growing wheat from 1932 to 1938, we were in no better position to grow wheat from 1938 to 1945 than if we had not grown wheat at all before 1938.
As I said, I am not a practical farmer, but, looking at it from the point of view of a reserve stock, if we were not growing wheat in those years, and if the good were not taken from the land, we would have more success when the need arose, and when we required fertile land to grow wheat. We, in the Labour Party, approve of what has been done by the Government. We feel that there is only one thing to regret, and that is that the Minister has seen fit to guarantee a price for the next two years. Perhaps that was done with a view to helping the position created by the disastrous year that has passed. If it is going to continue to cost this country approximately £8,000,000 a year to grow wheat, then we in the Labour movement will continue to suggest that that money could be better spent in increasing unemployment benefit, widows' and orphans' pensions, and old age pensions. The Labour Party will certainly not disagree with any action taken by the Government to reduce taxation and to increase and improve our social benefits with the money that, in the past, has been diverted to wheat.
Mr. Egan
I thought after the way in which the recent wheat price announcement of the Minister was received in the country that he would have changed his mind. I thought the rising flood of indignation and exasperation and the unanimous protests coming from all over, would have caused him to reconsider his decision and so avoid the necessity of proceeding with this motion at all. He has however apparently ignored all this and has decided to stand his ground. I have never known the farmers of this country to have been so exasperated about any action taken against their interests as they are about this action of the Minister. They are an eminently reasonable body of men, as the Minister has so lately testified, but they know that no case has been made or can be made for the reduction announced. They know that the price paid for wheat has been one of the lowest in Europe, the fourth lowest in fact. They know that Turkey has raised the price from 94/6 to £5 17s. 6d. per barrel. Despite what the Minister has said about the yield in Turkey, Turkey subsidised wheat exports last year to the amount of £13,000,000.
Hear, hear! Quite true.
Mr. Egan
The farmers of this country also know that the Austrians increased the wheat price from 84/- to 87/6 per barrel for wheat bushelling 60 lb. Of course they also know that the Swiss wheat growers can yodel away to the tune of £7 16s. per barrel.
If we had to grow wheat on Mont Blanc we might have to get that too.
Mr. Egan
They also know, they are painfully aware of it, that this has been the worst season in this century so far and they have been put to great extra cost to save what they have been able to save of their harvest and to suffer the complete loss of what they were not able to save. In view of these facts is it any wonder that the Minister's announcement has been received with general hostility? Deputies will remember that Bord na Móna found it necessary last September to increase the price of machine turf by 5/- per ton. The reason they gave was that bad weather conditions had increased the cost of harvesting turf. I put it to the Minister: Did the same conditions not apply to the wheat harvest this year, only in a much more devastating form? I also put it to the Minister, supposing his colleague, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, were to say to Bord na Móna that they must bring down the price of machine turf next year by 10/- or 12/- per ton, and suppose Bord na Móna acted on his recommendations and proceeded to make the necessary adjustments in respect to wages, etc., what would happen? I hope Deputies from rural constituencies, especially from wheat-growing constituencies and more especially Deputies of Clann na Talmhan, who claim to represent the farmers and wheat growers, and who favour the Minister's attitude in this matter will be honest enough to go down to their constituents and tell them: "Your price for wheat was too much. It is our policy to reduce the price drastically, consequently reducing the acreage and finally wiping out wheat altogether." That will be their policy if they adhere to this attitude.
Although our price was one of the lowest in Europe, Britain and the Six Counties were under it, but now we are behind the United Kingdom and the Six Counties. This will provide the partitionists in the North with one more argument, an economic argument, against unity. They will be able to say: "Our farmers in the North are getting more for wheat than the farmers south of the Border despite all the talk they have about wheat there."
A good deal has been heard here about ranchers and speculators. I certainly have no sympathy with the rancher who is developing a belated enthusiasm for wheat. These people would not grow wheat in a national emergency. Some of them got the wind up last winter about the immediate future of the cattle trade and were prepared to chance their arm with wheat until things had settled down again. Some more of them set their land to these speculators to whom the Minister refers. The Minister may argue that in order to damp the ardour of these belated wheat-growers it is necessary to lower the price. Is it fair to victimise the hard-working tillage farmers of this country in order to frighten those people away from wheat? The Minister may very reasonably ask: what is the alternative? My answer is that there is a method for ensuring against a surplus of beet without cutting prices, and surely a method can be found to ensure against a surplus of wheat without cutting prices. I seriously and honestly suggest to the Minister, while I admit there are grave snags and difficulties, that if he and his Department think those difficulties are insurmountable, he should hand over the whole problem of wheat-growing, prices and control to the management of the Irish Sugar Company who have surmounted greater obstacles with a much more difficult crop.
As regards the Minister's staggering proposition about prices, in addition to his announcement reducing the price of wheat he announced: "If you hold your wheat till the 1st December you get half a crown more, if you hold it till the 1st January you get 5/- more." Every farmer in Ireland knows that is impracticable, and I believe the Minister himself thinks it is impracticable. If these people were to thresh their wheat before December the majority of them have no lofts to store it, and even if they had they would want those lofts for their feeding barley and oats. I can assure the Minister the day is gone when a farmer is going to keep his stacks in the haggard till the 1st January and give an open invitation to every rat in the country to spend the Christmas with him.
The great importance of wheat to the farmer and to the nation is not sufficiently recognised generally. Whether we like it or not, it has become the great cash crop of the tillage farmer, in fact, the mainstay and hub of tillage. It has provided capital for mechanisation of which the Minister himself is so fond and which he advocates so enthusiastically. It has proved the greatest incentive in relation to the land project and without wheat we would be very far behind with mechanisation and very far behind with the land project, because 75 per cent. of the people who applied would not have applied otherwise.
If the Minister at this late stage has not realised the great importance of wheat to the farmer, not to talk of its importance nationally, he is a far less intelligent man than I have taken him to be or else he is far less in touch with farmers and tillage in this country than he claims to be. He has expressed more than once his deep sympathy with the farmers. His latest action against wheat will cause grave doubt as to the sincerity of his expressions of sympathy. I was only a few days in this House when I heard the Minister refer to what I think was a fair-day meeting which he addressed in Ennis during the last election. He recalled that Parnell had addressed the farmers at a meeting in the very same spot in 1881. He recalled that it was there and then that Parnell gave his famous advice to the farmers of Ireland whose holdings and homes were in danger at the time: "Keep a firm grip on your holdings." In view of the Minister's recent action against wheat and consequently against the farmers, I believe that if Parnell were with us to-day his advice to the farmers would be: "Keep a firm grip on your livelihood and do not allow yourselves to be driven back to potatoes and salt."
I think this motion put down by the Opposition is pure hypocrisy. I sat here listening to what they had to say and I have not heard anything constructive yet. There are two former Ministers for Agriculture in the House and neither of them has spoken so far. They should have tried to get in earlier and give the younger Deputies and the people an opportunity of hearing what the leaders of agriculture in Fianna Fáil were thinking about this. It was definitely stated in this House that when Deputy Moher and Deputy Beegan were speaking they were unaware that it had been arranged, signed, sealed and delivered by the former Government, Fianna Fáil, that wheat-growing would be restricted. You would think wheat-growing was the be-all and the end-all of farming in this country—that all the people had to do was to grow as much wheat as they could and they would be successful. This is one of the worst years in our history so far as the weather is concerned. There is not enough feeding in the haggards to winter feed the dairyman's cows. There is not enough feeding in his haggards to feed his live stock because everyone is following this will-o'-the-wisp that Fianna Fáil handed out to them last year.
I realise that there may be some other Deputies who want to speak on this motion but there are a few points which I should like to reply to. I never knew that Fianna Fáil were so concerned about small farmers until I came into this House. I consider that Fianna Fáil are the enemies of the small farmers, that they are the destroyers of the small farmers and the butchers of their farms. The previous speaker mentioned that Parnell, on one occasion, told the people to hold on to their holdings. We had history repeat itself in Fianna Fáil's time when the emergency man was let loose on the country.
In a blue shirt.
No. Deputy Aiken spoke about bullocks. I remember when bullocks fetched 30/- a piece.
A Deputy
Where are the Brown-shirts?
Where are the Broy Harriers?
Where are the Russian jewels?
Order!
I am replying, Sir, to Fianna Fáil interruptions. That chorus will not quieten me.
Oh!
Number one farmer.
Yes—and the beet factory worker. When I was milking 40 cows I had to kill 40 calves a year under Fianna Fáil.
A Deputy
You were not a Blue-shirt then.
We taught you what free speech means.
We hear about self-sufficiency and about importing barley and oats. There is Fianna Fáil self-sufficiency: there it is for you.
I heard Deputy Dillon being jeered by the people on the Opposition Benches. When the inter-Party Government was first formed, the biggest business that Clover Meats and Denny's were doing in Waterford was still the slaughter of calves. After two months of inter-Party Government, calves were fetching £6, £7 and £8 apiece in this country, and not 6/-, 7/- or 8/-, because Deputy Dillon had the pluck and the initiative to go to England and settle a price—which is something his predecessors did not do.
The Deputy will now come to the motion.
I am comparing the record of Deputy Dillon as Minister for Agriculture with the record of his predecessors in office. If he had followed the line which his predecessors took, he would have continued the grave injury to the agricultural industry which the Fianna Fáil Ministers for Agriculture were inflicting.
Deputy Moher spoke about packed mules and sweated coolies. I saw some in my time—and it was not in the past four or five years that I saw them. However, I will conclude my speech by saying that when Deputy Dillon was made Minister for Agriculture a new phase came about in Irish agriculture. Agriculture was always said to be the primary industry in this country but it was not recognised as the primary industry here. The position was that industry was subsidised in this country as against agriculture. However, when Deputy Dillon became Minister, agriculture became the primary industry of this country in every sense of the word. Deputy Dillon wrung more out of his Government and out of his Party for agriculture than any of his predecessors.
I deplore the fact that this motion was moved in this House. Recently, I had to listen to a debate on another motion here which was moved by the same four Deputies—a motion concerning damp wheat. At that time, we heard Deputy Carter say that he knew a man who sold wheat for £1 a barrel. We shall have to get Dick Barton or Rip Kirby or somebody from Never-never Land to go out and find that man who sold his wheat for £1 a barrel.
During this awful season that we have had, the Opposition have tried by every means in their power to confuse our farmers and to create scares. We have heard stories that there were queues when, in fact, there were not. We heard that the mills were turning away the corn: I was told that myself by a Fianna Fáil back. However, I went down to the corn mills myself and I discovered that, half an hour earlier, there had been a queue because a train was due at the level crossing. If I had not made it my business to find out the truth, it would have been in the papers that there were queues outside the mills in Waterford and that they could not get in.
I have to go back to my constituency and face the farmers there. I am not afraid to do so. I was with them last Saturday night and I was with them again last Monday. I know that they will not be intimidated by any Fianna Fáil hacks or follow their dicta. I know that they will not be influenced by the activities of Fianna Fáil hacks or by the directions given to Fianna Fáil cumainn to stir up as much dissension as possible amongst the agricultural community and in the county committees of agriculture.
I wonder if the Taoiseach would mind extending the time for another hour, because the time is very short?
No. I have given you what you asked for—four full hours.
It is a matter for everybody.
Our case is made.
And buried.
The case made against this motion by members on the Government side of the House is a very weak one. A few months ago, the present Government were campaigning throughout the country seeking the support of the people——
Is the Deputy closing?
No, I am not. At that time, the designated Minister for Agriculture announced that if the inter-Party Government were elected they would guarantee the price of wheat for five years. That was during the height of the general election campaign. It is reasonable to assume that very many people were influenced by that promise and that they felt that, as honourable men, the inter-Party Government would give a fair and decent and honourable guaranteed price for wheat. Again, I do not think I am wronging the Party opposite in making that statement.
It is rather a coincidence that, on this very day when this motion as regards the price of wheat is being discussed in this House, another motion was moved to pay almost £1,500,000 by way of a bounty to people who never got wet or were out in the wet all this year. A motion was moved to give these people an ex gratia payment.
What about policemen?
It is extraordinary that these two motions should be moved in this House on the same day. The farmers are going to lose from £2,000,000 to £3,000,000 in the coming year as a result of this Government's policy in the matter of wheat.
We have heard much talk here about wheat ranchers. The Minister for Agriculture has staffs throughout the country to give him records. He mentioned four or five counties around Dublin where there are about 40 persons who ranch. He said that one man grew 1,000 acres——
Several grew 1,000 acres.
The Minister did not mention them. He mentioned five counties around Dublin.
Yes.
Where less than 40 people ranch large acreages of land. I want to suggest to the Minister there is nothing to prevent anyone here going across to England and, if he can, acquiring thousands of acres of land there whereon he can grow wheat because the law there will not prevent him from growing wheat and he will get a higher price for it than that offered to our farmers by their own Government. The Minister has all the power of law behind him. He has a majority behind him in this House and he can pass any law he likes to prevent anyone injuring land through bad husbandry. He should not, however, penalise the 98 per cent. of our farmers who are growing wheat and have been growing wheat for years past. I am speaking now of the ordinary medium-sized farmer, the man who grows wheat on 5, 10 or 15 per cent. of his arable land because that suits his economy.
No red herring should be dragged into this debate. For 20 long years efforts have been made to kill wheat growing. Down in the Library there is a document which should bring a blush of shame to the cheeks of anyone who reads it. There is a document down there published by the Cumann na nGaedheal Government at the expense of the taxpayers proving why wheat should not be grown here. Young Deputies in this House should go down to the Library and read that document.
There might be a few white elephants there, too.
That document was published to show that wheat could not be grown here. What are the facts? This year the price of wheat bushelling 60 lb. is £32 per ton. Actually at the moment we are paying £32 8s. for No. 1 Manitoba wheat. Is that not true? We are paying for Australian £29 15s. We are paying for Pacific £30 8s. and the Minister and his inter-Party Government propose to pay next year to the Irish farmer £27 per ton for 60 lb. bushel weight wheat.
Plus 8/- drying profit.
Nonsense.
For barley he is paying to the Africans and others £30 per ton. Last September and October he was approached by several delegations of farmers to guarantee a price for feeding barley in the year 1954— the same price that Deputy Tom Walsh guaranteed last year, namely, £24 per ton. The Minister said "No". He definitely refused to do that and the price that was given eventually was £18 per ton.
Nonsense.
Truth.
Nonsense.
Truth.
Order!
I can prove to the Minister that many farmers who grew feeding barley in 1954, with a moisture content of 23 per cent. sold it for £18 per ton. There are Deputies sitting behind the Minister who went down the country and announced that the price was £18 per ton, that the Minister could not afford to give any more for it and that the pig feeders could not afford to give any more for it. He is suggesting that next year he will guarantee a price of £20 per ton for feeding barley. I wish him well with it. I hope he will get it because I do not believe it will be economic to grow feeding barley, or any barley, at £20 a ton.
I want to see feeding stuffs as cheap as anyone else does here but the people who utilise their land to grow wheat, feeding barley or anything else are entitled to a fair return for their labours. I am talking of the ordinary small farmer of ten, 15 and 35 acres. These are the backbone of the country. I have no interest in those who would ranch wheat and we on this side of the House will be behind the Minister if he takes steps to give a fair price for wheat and to eliminate these people. The Minister for Lands can eliminate them in 48 hours if he wants to.
As is his wont, the Minister has produced a document here to prove his rotten case. I pity him coming in here to-night to defend such a rotten case. He is in an awkward spot and his colleagues should have stood behind him and behind the agricultural community in this very critical year through which our farmers have passed. They are entitled to grow any kind of crop they like on their lands. The Labour Party have joined the ranks of the anti-wheat growers. I am sure Deputy Larkin and the other members of the Labour Party could tell the history of this country when tens of thousands of their forebears died of hunger a little over 100 years ago because our farmers were forced by an alien Government to export the wheat they had grown. It comes badly from the Labour Party that they should back up Fine Gael, the ranchers' party, who have always been opposed to tillage and wheat-growing. Even at this late hour I hope the Government will change its mind, accept this motion and reconsider the matter in the light of next year's crop. That is all that is asked. They boast about guaranteeing the price for two years. Circumstances in the world may change so much inside two years that the Minister may find himself compelled to double that price. He guaranteed the price six months ago during the election campaign. Every farmer, every worker engaged in the harvesting of wheat, dependent on the mills for his employment, or even engaged in the lofts little thought, when voting for the inter-Party Government, that the very first guarantee would be a guarantee to reduce the price by £5 per ton for the coming year.
I have only three or four minutes according to the agreement, but I just want to put a few facts on record. Let me give first the price of Irish wheat compared with foreign wheat, having regard to the figures given a few minutes ago by Deputy Allen, Irish wheat this year is costing at the present price 100/- a barrel on the mill floor.
Nonsense.
The Deputy may say "nonsense". Let him ask my predecessor sitting over there if he will not accept that that is the correct figure. If he does not accept it, then I will pass across this document from his own Department, a document which was issued when he was Minister for Finance. The present price of No. 1 Manitoba on the mill floor is 78/9. The present price of Australian is 71/3. Those are the present prices. When these prices are in operation next year it will mean that the Irish farmer is being given over present prices 11/3 per barrel more than the price at which Manitoba can be brought in and approximately 18/- per barrel more than Australian. Those are the equivalent factual figures given in the various memoranda which were prepared in the time of my predecessor. They are the present-day prices, not the minimum prices which were laid down under the International Wheat Agreement which was signed by the previous Government. The price of one dollar fifty-five, payable under the International Wheat Agreement would be an even greater disparity, something like 7/- or 7/3 a barrel. Let us get down to facts. We had here this year as a result of the policy of the previous Government 490,000 acres of wheat.
And we are quite proud of it.
We had an unseasonable harvest which we regret, and the evidence of the regret and the concern of this Government at the unseasonable harvest was shown by the way in which the Minister for Agriculture immediately changed the moisture content of the wheat and made arrangements for the purchase of unmillable wheat, action which nobody thought he would be able to take. Had it not been for the harvest the position would clearly have been that we would have had a surplus of wheat of which we would have been unable to dispose except at a considerable loss. What the previous Government said they wanted was 300,000 tons of dry native wheat; it was only for 300,000 tons that they were going to make storage arrangements available. The 300,000 tons were not to be a minimum production but a maximum one, because that was all they had storage arrangements available for. Is it not hypocritical that the Deputies on the other side of the House should now try to play a different tune?
I have been listening to this debate since it commenced. I have been listening to debates in this House for 25 years and I have always thought it was a great pity, as I do now, that wheat should be made a political question. It is a great pity indeed that the Parties opposite cannot drop the politics and look on this as a safety cash crop for the farmer. We must remember that wheat is a very important crop for the farmers of this country. It has varied over the past few years, but I think it has been a constant income of between £10,000,000 and £12,000,000 for the farmers—a substantial amount of money. It is a great pity that friends of the farmers on all sides of the House—and I suppose everybody wants to see the farmer as happy as possible—could not look on this question in a reasonable way without any prejudices based on the past or anything like that.
I shall not dwell on the points made about the necessity to grow wheat for security reasons. There is a good deal in that argument but it has been fully developed. What I do want to impress on the Deputies is that these prejudices have been going on for many, many years. Deputy Allen referred here to a leaflet or a pamphlet issued in 1932 by Cumann na nGaedheal, which set out to prove that wheat could not be grown in this country. The attitude of Fine Gael has not changed very much. When the present Minister for Agriculture first became Minister in 1948, he was only a few days in office when he issued an advertisement to the newspapers appealing in the springtime to the farmers to grow more barley, oats and potatoes and that he would guarantee a market for these commodities. He never mentioned wheat. He never mentioned beet. He told the farmers to grow more oats, more potatoes, more barley, and then, underneath that in big letters he said: "Let us show them." I do not know who "us" meant or who "them" were, but it appears that everybody accepted the fact that "us" was Fine Gael, the anti-wheat growers, and that "them" were Fianna Fáil, the wheat growers. We know the history of that year. After that guarantee of prices for barley, oats and potatoes, when these crops came on the market there was no market for them.
We are told now that there is an alternative to wheat-growing, that farmers should turn to the growing of oats, barley and potatoes, and that there will be a market for them. Let us hope there is more substance now in the Minister's promises than there was in 1948, because in 1948 were it not for the East-Donegal by-election there would have been no guaranteed price for oats. Everybody remembers some of the pronouncements of the Minister for Agriculture in the past. He said he would not be got dead in a field of wheat. We know all these quotations from the Minister for Agriculture in the past and we accordingly know that we have a Minister prejudiced against wheat-growing and who was able to persuade the Fine Gael Party to follow him. Of course, the Labour Party followed the Fine Gael Party. The prejudice of the Labour Party was shown by Deputy Kyne, who left us in no doubt as to whether or not he was behind this motion. He pointed out that we were paying out of the taxpayers' money £8,000,000 annually in subsidies on wheat, bread and flour. He assumed that all that was due to wheat-growing in Ireland. Of course that was done in order to serve a purpose.
I am not concerned with that but I should like to point out that the subsidy is not entirely due to Irish wheat. Let us accept the figures just given by the Minister for Finance, and I am sure he made as good a case as he could against the motion we are now considering. Even on his figures the growing of Irish wheat would be responsible only for half of the £8,000,000 and if there was no wheat at all grown in this country half of the sum would be necessary to provide bread at its present price. But the overlooking of that is part of the prejudices of the Parties supporting the Minister for Agriculture in opposing the motion.
Deputy Kyne also said there was no labour required for wheat-growing, that all that was necessary was a man and his combine in the same way as the man and his dog were all that was necessary long ago on the grass. Is not that again a very biased statement? Surely, nobody can suggest that no work is necessary before the combine goes into a field of wheat to harvest it. Surely everybody knows that the field has to be ploughed and that somebody must harrow it and spray it to kill the weeds. There are various other operations to be gone through before the wheat is produced ready for the combine and it is unfair to talk about this crop in terms of the man and his combine. As I have pointed out the combine is only part of the operations of sowing wheat. We must also remember that the combine only applies to a very small part of the crop. A greater part of the crop is reaped by other methods —by the reaper and binder, by the mowing machine and as the Minister for Defence said, by the scythe in many cases, and very well done by the scythe, too, as he pointed out.
These are all instances of the prejudices on the other side of the House against wheat-growing and we are not surprised at all if the Labour Party members go into the division lobby against this motion. If we look upon wheat as a cash crop—and it is a very stable cash crop—our hope should be to get an economic price for the farmers. The point is to find out what that economic price should be. There should be no talk in that of world prices. What difference is it to the farmer what prices obtain in other parts of the world? He will make up his economy on what it costs him to grow wheat.
I do not see why he should compare his costs with those of farmers in America and Denmark. What we want to decide is an economic price for farmers here. When I was Minister for Agriculture I always maintained that point of view. In the growing of wheat, we sometimes gain and we sometimes lose. During the war we gained by having wheat produced here at a cheaper price than we could import it. Now we are losing on it because we could import wheat at the moment cheaper than we could produce it at home. But in a few years' time maybe we could make on it again. As far as the farmer is concerned, and as far as an economic price is concerned, it makes no difference to the farmer what the world price is. Quoting world prices will not help the problem before us of getting the farmer to grow wheat at a fair price.
I suppose the information is interesting and useful to us but it should not influence us in our decision. I saw some publication or I saw in writing, quite recently, the price of the barrel of wheat since 1932 up to the present time, giving the agricultural wage. It was rather remarkable how the barrel of wheat was almost always about the same as the weekly wage. The top price for this year's wheat is 82/6 but the agricultural wage is 84/- which is very close but the Government Order is to reduce that price, it is to take 12/6 off it. It brings the barrel of wheat down to £3 10s. There is no justification for it as far as the farmer's economy is concerned. The farmer will not pay less rates, less wages, or less for his fertilisers. That is admitted by everybody and there is no necessity to argue that point. He may have to pay more. There is no case as far as the farmer is concerned for bringing down that price. If it has remained, as I say, all the time in or about that level of a week's wage, there is no case for bringing it down at the moment.
Reference was made by some of the speakers to what the Fianna Fáil Government had decided upon. That was read out here. I do not want to go into it again in detail. Deputy Aiken dealt with that. I do want to deal with one aspect of it, that is, that there was no secrecy whatever. As a matter of fact—I cannot produce it now, but I can produce it maybe to-morrow—it was in our election literature. Here is the Official Report, Volume 146, No. 10, column 1250, of the 6th July of this year on the Estimate for the Department of the Taoiseach. Deputy de Valera, speaking in that debate, said:
"The Taoiseach has touched upon the difficulty that follows from the policy of guaranteed agricultural prices. He indicates that this year something like 90 per cent. of our wheat requirements will be homegrown; I did not get quite as high a figure as that from the information supplied to me. That that does constitute a problem we were fully aware. Even with the lesser percentage which I understood was likely to result it was constituting a problem, and we were facing it by having a definite policy in that regard. We felt we should aim at having at least two-thirds of our wheat requirements produced here. There would be a certain amount of fluctuation upwards and downwards from that but that would roughly be the aim which would best serve the national interest."
Three hundred thousand tons of dried wheat are, I think, as near as can be to two-thirds of our requirements. Deputy de Valera, speaking here on the Taoiseach's Estimate, when he was in opposition, made that statement when there was no necessity for him to divulge this secret that the Minister, Mr. Dillon, made so much about and with his usual buffoonery amused his followers over there. There was no necessity to divulge the secret, but Deputy de Valera took it in his stride and gave it without any hesitation whatever. So all this talk about secrecy is all gone, and if the eight innocent Deputies that were referred to put down this motion without knowing what they were walking into——
They know it now.
——all I can say is that they do not read the Official Reports or do not take an interest in the speeches that are made here on matters of that kind.
Mr. de Valera
It was mentioned at the Party meeting as well.
Of course. I know that.
Mr. de Valera
They think we do things in the way they do them.
Naturally.
Were not you trying to put on a cattle tax?
Mr. de Valera
That is a lie.
You were convicted before.
On a point of order. Is it permissible for Deputy de Valera to describe a remark made by a Deputy in the House as a "lie"?
Mr. de Valera
It is not permissible. For that reason I have to withdraw it. We know perfectly well what the position is.
It is untrue. It is a falsehood, an absolute falsehood and it comes from a good place. Three judges would not believe him on his oath.
You tried to put it over. It did not work.
Three judges did not believe Deputy Oliver Flanagan on his oath.
Fifteen thousand did.
It is a good jury.
Fifteen thousand.
I can understand the Fine Gael Party and the Labour Party making up their minds that wheat-growing does not fit in with their policy. It is the Fianna Fáil policy and therefore they should get rid of it. If, however, they had any sympathy with the farmers who suffered so much during this last harvest, they should have made up their minds: "Well, not this year, give them a chance" or, if they even wanted to indicate their prejudice, their hostility, to wheat-growing, they could announce a token reduction of about 1/- a barrel. This reduction of 12/6 per barrel, which amounts to £5 per acre, is a drastic reduction. I think that word describes it very mildly. It is enough indeed to kill wheat-growing and certainly would kill wheat-growing if farmers had an alternative crop to turn to. Of course, I know that cynical people say: "What can he do? He has no other crop to turn to." That is very poor consolation indeed for a man who is up against it and feels that wheat-growing is no longer attractive to him.
There is another point to which I would like to refer. The Order does seek to give some reward to the farmer who harvests his crop carefully but I think everybody admits that the 1st December is a ridiculous date as far as that is concerned. If you want to hit at the ranchers and the speculators, personally, I would be all with that, if any solution can be found. A solution has been suggested, to let the Land Commission deal with it. If no other solution can be found, I would say "go ahead" but, if you want to let them off on the low price, they must combine, they must market their wheat immediately and there is no necessity to wait until 1st December in order to give a decent ordinary farmer a better price. The half-crown would not be sufficient. It should be something more than that. The Minister should amend this Order and make it a token reduction. Make it a large reduction up to the middle of October to get at the rancher and speculator but, from the middle of October, if it was only a token reduction, he might not meet with so much opposition. This year, it was very unwise and very unfair to interfere with the price at all.
Question put.
The Dáil divided: Tá, 64; Níl, 74.
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Allen, Denis.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Blaney, Neil T.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breen, Dan.
- Brennan, Joseph.
- Brennan, Paudge.
- Breslin, Cormac.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Burke, Patrick J.
- Butler, Bernard.
- Calleary, Phelim A.
- Carter, Frank.
- Childers, Erskine H.
- Colley, Harry.
- Collins, James J.
- Corry, Martin J.
- Crowley, Honor M.
- Crowley, Tadhg.
- Cunningham, Liam.
- Davern, Michael J.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- de Valera, Eamon.
- de Valera, Vivion.
- Egan, Nicholas.
- Fanning, John.
- Flanagan, Seán.
- Flynn, John.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Geoghegan, John.
- Gilbride, Eugene.
- Gogan, Richard.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Hillery, Patrick J.
- Hilliard, Michael.
- Kelly, Edward.
- Kenneally, William.
- Kennedy, Michael J.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Lahiffe, Robert.
- Lemass, Seán.
- Lynch, Celia.
- Lynch, Jack.
- MacCarthy, Seán.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- McGrath, Patrick.
- Maguire, Ben.
- Maher, Peadar.
- Moher, John W.
- Mooney, Patrick.
- Moran, Michael.
- Moylan, Seán.
- Ó Briain, Donnchadh.
- O'Malley, Donough.
- Ormonde, John.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Mary B.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
Níl
- Barrett, Stephen D.
- Barry, Anthony.
- Barry, Richard.
- Beirne, John.
- Belton, Jack.
- Blowick, Joseph.
- Burke, James J.
- Byrne, Alfred.
- Byrne, Thomas.
- Carew, John.
- Casey, Seán.
- Coburn, George.
- Collins, Seán.
- Coogan, Fintan.
- Corish, Brendan.
- Cosgrave, Liam.
- Costello, Declan.
- Costello, John A.
- Crotty, Patrick J.
- Crowe, Patrick.
- Davin, William.
- Deering, Mark.
- Desmond, Daniel.
- Dillon, James M.
- Dockrell, Henry P.
- Dockrell, Maurice E.
- Donegan, Patrick S.
- Donnellan, Michael.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Dunne, Seán.
- Esmonde, Anthony C.
- Everett, James.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Finlay, Thomas A.
- Flanagan, Oliver J.
- Giles, Patrick.
- Glynn, Brendan M.
- Hession, James M.
- Hughes, Joseph.
- Kenny, Henry.
- Keyes, Michael.
- Kyne, Thomas A.
- Larkin, Denis.
- Larkin, James.
- Lindsay, Patrick J.
- Lynch, Thaddeus.
- McAuliffe, Patrick.
- MacBride, Seán.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- Madden, David J.
- Manley, Timothy.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, Michael P.
- Murphy, William.
- Norton, William.
- O'Carroll, Maureen.
- O'Donnell, Patrick.
- O'Donovan, John.
- O'Hara, Thomas.
- O'Higgins, Michael J.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F.
- O'Reilly, Patrick.
- O'Sullivan, Denis J.
- Palmer, Patrick W.
- Pattison, James P.
- Reynolds, Mary.
- Roddy, Joseph.
- Rooney, Eamonn.
- Spring, Dan.
- Sweetman, Gerard.
- Tully, James.
- Tully, John.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Ó Briain and Hilliard; Níl: Deputies Doyle and Spring.
Question declared lost.
The farmers are getting it in the neck.