It is a pity we had not them earlier.
Committee on Finance. - Vote 27—Agriculture.
Minister for Agriculture (Mr. Dillon):
I move:—
That a sum not exceeding £5,012,700 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1957, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Minister for Agriculture, including certain Services administered by that Office, and for payment of certain Subsidies and sundry Grants-in-Aid.
As has been the custom now for some years since I inaugurated it in 1949, I am circulating for the convenience of Deputies a White Paper which goes into some detail in regard to the services administered by the Department of Agriculture. I think copies of that White Paper are now in the hands of Deputies.
The Deputy has now the customary three weeks or a month, which he ordinarily takes to discuss this Estimate, to study it in great detail. The total sum sought represents a net increase on that sought in the previous year by £41,033.
I observe that a motion has been put down to refer this Estimate back, which procedure I understand operates rather to widen the scope of our debate and to render it necessary to review certain broad questions of policy which might otherwise be inappropriate to an Estimate debate. I need hardly assure you, Sir, that I welcome this widening of the scope of our discussion that is provided by the motion put down by Deputy Walsh and so I look back over the past 12 months to review the achievements and the difficulties which we have experienced in that period.
I think perhaps the most significant problem with which I found myself confronted as Minister for Agriculture during the past 12 months was the dastardly and unscrupulous campaign launched by the Irish Press on the 2nd February for the purpose of destroying the cattle trade in this country. I should like to tell the House now of the difficulties that that dastardly campaign created. I should like to invite the House to rejoice with me that yesterday's Dublin Cattle Market registered the utter and complete failure of that filthy attempt to destroy the small farmers of this country in a rotten political racket.
The small farmers would not listen to you very long.
If that is the line the Minister is going to start on, then we accept the challenge.
It is. This campaign began on the 2nd February with a scare heading "Cattle Prices Down: English Demand Slackening Off".
Was it not the truth?
It was followed on the 3rd February with: "Cattle Down by 16/6 a cwt. in a Year".
Is it not the truth?
It was followed on the 4th February with: "Cattle are down by 8/- to 10/- a cwt. Many Remain Unsold." That was followed on the 8th February by Deputy Childers—"Cattle Boom Over—Childers." That was followed on the 9th February by: "Price Drop of 25 per cent., says Sales Master." That was followed on the 9th February by: "Cattle Were Down Again Yesterday." That was followed on the 10th February by: "Heavy Cattle Down by £10." On 10th February the heading was: "Argentine Beef Lowers Our Prices" and on 16th February the heading was: "Lower Prices Again at Limerick Cattle Sale." Again on 16th February they have the heading: "Cattle Are Going Up, says Mr. Dillon, by over £6 by April the 30th." The cheapest beast sold in Dublin this week was more than £6 per cwt. and it is not yet the end of April. God help the poor innocent fellows that bought and read the Irish Press. It was the dearest newspaper they ever purchased. There are men who lost hundreds of pounds since 1st February last through reading the rotten Irish Press, the Fianna Fáil Pravda, and through falling into the error of believeing what they read in it.
The House has heard a series of flare headings which I have read out here, and on 27th March a correspondent wrote to the Irish Press and said that he had noticed in recent articles the statement that had been made that the bottom had fallen out of the cattle market. However, there had been an increase of 12/4 per cwt. and he wondered which bottom had fallen out. To that letter, there was a note by the editor:—
"This is nonsense. We made no prediction that the bottom would fall out of the cattle trade. Mr. Nugent has been misled by political propaganda."
I want Dáil Éireann to know that, in the weeks when those headings were being published in the Irish Press, price negotiations were proceeding in London. It was in our vital interest that the case should be made in London that prices in Ireland for store cattle were strong. It was in our vital interest that the case should be made by the British Farmers' Union that they had to pay a high price for store cattle in Ireland and that they were entitled, because of that, to a generous price settlement. That paper was produced in London and those headings were read in London to demonstrate that that sort of claim could not be made. I could not answer that; I could not say a word. It was none of my business to poke my nose into negotiations between the British Ministry of Agriculture and their own people.
That was the most dastardly campaign that was ever operated by any political organisation in this country in my memory and it was done in the hope of obtaining a dirty, little political triumph over the Government of which I am a member and in which I am Minister for Agriculture. It cost the dupes who fell for it thousands of pounds, because they were persuaded by that kind of dirty rubbish to throw their cattle on the market.
They were not fools.
If they buy the Irish Press they are fools. Some of the poor people believe the Irish Press and, believe it or not, there are people as foolish as that in this country. They are the people who were induced to sell their cattle at £5 a head less than they could have got for them.
Major de Valera
Were the reports published not accurate? Were the facts published to-day not accurate?
I do not know if Deputy de Valera was here when I was reading out that series of headings.
Read them out again. You still have 15 minutes to go.
I will. This began with a heading in the Irish Press——
Is it any wonder that agriculture is depressed in this country?
God help this country with a mad Minister for Agriculture.
On 28th January, the Irish Press carried a headline “Cattle Boom Over”.
There is no necessity to re-read all these headlines.
Major de Valera
Were the facts not published accurately? Was it not accurately reported to-day when the prices went up? Tell the whole story now when you are putting out your own political propaganda.
I will reply to this series of articles by quoting an expression used by ex-Deputy Little when he was asked to comment on another article appearing in the same paper. Speaking from Dubrovnik came the voice of ex-Deputy Little when he said:—"You can say flatly that the report in the Irish Press is entirely false.” I adopt those words of ex-Deputy Little and I apply them to all the reports I have read out.
Major de Valera
Were the facts false? That is a simple question which you will not answer.
The facts were false, and the campaign was despicable and disastrous for our people.
Are the farmers going to hear nothing better than this tirade?
They are going to hear plenty, but I first want to point out this campaign and make this matter clear, because it gives us an indication of the difficulties that confront any Minister for Agriculture in this country, if he is to have on his flank so irresponsible a body as those who would prejudice the interests of the people for the furtherance of their own petty political Party purposes.
On a point of order, I would ask the Minister to bring to the House and read out the reports made by Radio Eireann on the price of cattle in the last six weeks.
That is not a point of order.
Radio Eireann is a Government Department.
It is not anything of the sort.
It is because it is not that it is untrue. That is the implication.
We are concerned to consider the vital figures to which we will naturally turn in attempting to assess the actual progress of the industry as a whole. I think that one of the fundamental figures to which we must refer in that regard is the number of live stock in the country. I think it ought to be a source of satisfaction to us all that the January figure records an increase of something of the order of 80,000 head as compared with the previous January of 1955. Of course, in dealing with that figure, we have got to bear in mind that, whereas the June enumeration represents a reasonably accurate census of live stock, the January enumeration is very definitely more of an estimate. However, it would appear that the trend is in the right direction.
To what extent is it in the right direction?
It is in the right direction; it is up rather than down.
By 6,000.
It is a good direction to go in.
Where does the Deputy get the figure of 6,000?
Will the Minister give me the figure he has?
The total number of cattle in January, 1955, was 3,983,000. The total number of cattle in January, 1956, is 4,069,500, representing an increase of 86,500.
How many did we fail to export in the form of frozen meat and chilled meat?
I cannot tell.
I will tell you. I can tell you about the carry-over.
The Deputy should allow the Minister to make his statement.
I wish to give the Minister the correct figures.
The Deputy will have his opportunity.
Is it not a good thing that the tendency is for numbers to increase rather than to decrease? If we look at sheep, we see that the increase is 195,600 which is a satisfactory figure. As regards pigs, the decrease is 136,000 and I propose to mention before I conclude, the measures proposed to induce a very substantial expansion——
I would not have mentioned it at all had it not been for the flag waving by the Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy O'Sullivan, when he had the photograph and the enumeration for January. I just wanted to remind the Minister of the Parliamentary Secretary's flag waving on that occasion.
To what is the Deputy referring?
I hope to refer before I conclude to the plans which we have in mind for the expansion of the pig population and the exports of bacon and pigs in the time that lies ahead. It may be advantageous to refer briefly to certain other statistical matters of which the House may wish to have knowledge. One is the total intake of milk by the co-operative creameries. It is interesting to recall that the total quantity of milk supplied to creameries has increased from approximately 170,000,000 gallons per annum in 1948 to 237.4 million gallons in 1955 and that over the same period our total output of butter has increased from 582,000 cwt. in 1948-49 to 764,063 in 1955-56.
I thought we exceeded that in one year.
In the previous year it was 778,000.
I thought so.
Cheese production is approximately the same. Deputies may also be interested to know that the total consumption of milk in the Dublin milk supply area and in the Cork milk supply area tends steadily to increase. The per diem consumption of milk in the Dublin milk supply area has risen from 52,000 gallons in 1948 to 67,482 gallons in 1955 and the total consumption in the year 1955 was 24,630,000 gallons as compared with 23,481,000 gallons in 1954.
Has there been an increase in the consumption per head?
I cannot answer that offhand but where the per diem consumption has risen from 52,000 to 67,000 I think it would suggest—but I cannot answer the question categorically—that there is some increase per head in consumption. In Cork over the same period the 1948 per diem consumption has increased from 9,653 gallons to 9,977 gallons per diem in 1955. In 1954 the total consumption of liquid milk in Cork during the year was 3,569,000 gallons and in 1955 it was 3,641,000 gallons.
A great deal of anxiety has been expressed about the future of the chocolate crumb industry. I do not want to express excessive optimism in regard to that industry but I think I can safely say that, if reasonable prudence is exercised by those concerned for it, we have no reason to be unduly apprehensive about the future of the industry. We are competitive I think at the present time and if those responsible for the industry will maintain their present competitive approach to that market, I have every reason to hope and to believe that we shall be able to retain our position in it on a profitable basis but that is entirely conditional on the readiness of those who are engaged in it to maintain the present competitive attitude which they have so successfully maintained for the last five or six years.
I have said in many other places what I think it is my duty to dwell on in some detail here and that is the fact that the whole future of this country, in town, city and rural Ireland depends on the success or failure of our attempt to expand agricultural production. I plead guilty to having a pragmatical mind when it comes down to the question of how we are to go about that. I believe one can waste a good deal of time theorising instead of asking oneself the practical question from the point of view of the small farmer, the medium farmer and the large farmer: what can I do to help if I want to help to obtain this objective?
There are certain practical things they can do within the next three months. One of them is that where a man has kept five cows heretofore this year in the month of May, June or July instead of sending five cows or heifers to the bull, he should send seven and retain two extra on his land. In like manner the man who has got ten should try to keep 14 and the man who has 20 should try to keep 28. The case may be made that a man's farm is so geared that, to undertake the extra milking that would be requisite in the event of his adopting this programme, he would have to adjust his byre capacity or his milking machine capacity or the labour he employs. If it is practical for him to do so, by all means let that be done. If it is not, then I would urge upon him that he should continue to milk the number of cattle he has milked heretofore and allow the additional heifers or cows he retains to suckle the calves and from them he can choose the best for inclusion in his herd for the years that lie ahead.
Progress reported; Committee to sit again.
The Dáil adjourned at 5 p.m. until 3 o'clock on Tuesday, 17th April, 1956.