Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 8 May 1956

Vol. 157 No. 1

Committee on Finance. - Supplementary Estimate. Vote 27—Agriculture (Resumed).

Mr. Cunningham

This is a rather important item and I wish to say a few words on it. It is good in so far as this Supplementary Estimate by the Minister does ensure that a certain grade of pig, that is, grade A, will carry what can be regarded as a guaranteed price, so that all those farmers who send pigs to the factory, if they are grade A, will get not less than 235/- per cwt. dead weight. For that there is required a Supplementary Estimate of £50,000, but, as well, there is required a sum of 4/7d. per pig from the producer. Now that 4/7d. by the producer will be paid on all pigs, irrespective of whether they are grade A or otherwise. These two things, the Estimate of £50,000 and whatever sum is gathered by the levy of 4/7d. per pig, will go to form a pool. At the present time, and possibly during this year, that pool may not be called upon, that is, the prices received by grade A pigs exported will never drop below 235/- per cwt. What will happen to that pool if it is not called upon during the year or next year? Will it be kept there to help the big industry, and if the pool is not used this year, can we expect that the levy of 4/7d. will be done away with, so that pig producers will not have, in years to come, to keep contributing to that pool?

This 4/7d., together with the Supplementary Estimate, means, in effect, that two things will happen—No. 1, the producer of the pig will have to pay for its consumption across the water, and, No. 2, the general taxpayer, who will be asked to put up the £50,000 which the Minister is seeking now, will also be asked to pay so that Irish bacon will be consumed at a cheaper price across the water. However, the subsidisation of exports is not anything new.

In regard to the export on the hoof which has been allowed since 1st of May, what arrangements have been made in regard to that? Is everyone allowed to export? Are there any restrictions? What restrictions have the British imposed?

Minister for Agriculture (Mr. Dillon)

None.

Mr. Cunningham

Is there any grading, or has the Minister considered giving a subsidy or putting a floor under the export of live pigs of a certain grade? Will it be carried out in the same way as the export of cattle? A further point is in connection with pigs reaching the factory which will not be graded in the A category. We do know that over half the number of pigs going into these factories do not reach that grade. I presume that, as is the case heretofore, it will be a case of taking the best price the farmer can get for those. That leaves the same unsatisfactory position as before, which is bad enough as far as a farmer is concerned; but what makes the matter worse is that, where the consumer is concerned, I am afraid he does not get the benefit of the farmer's loss.

If a farmer receives a bad price for anything there, including grade B down, the consumer, the general public, does not get the advantage of it. I know that in most rural districts bacon is sold as bacon, and it is impossible to get the same differentiation between the various cuts as exists, say, in a city like Dublin or some of the other cities. That means, in effect, that the housewife in the rural areas has not an opportunity of selecting the dearer cuts or the cheaper cuts, if she so wishes. She has to take what is sitting on the counter, and usually the price she pays is the higher price, whether it is grade B or A or X. That is something over which the Minister has no control, but he should arrange with the Minister for Industry and Commerce that there should be some better system. It is not fair that, when the farmer is so unlucky as to get a bad price, through his pig not grading up to a certain grade, the consumer should be mulcted as well.

As most Deputies have pointed out during the course of this debate so far, a more satisfactory solution to the problems which have caused unsatisfactory conditions in the pig industry up to now—we have fluctuations and high prices, low prices, drops in production, gluts here and there at periods—would be that the producer of pigs, rather than having a guaranteed price for one grade, should have access to cheaper feeding stuffs. Sometimes a person who produces pigs also produces feeding stuffs but when he buys back the pig feeding stuffs he finds that prices have gone up more than 100 per cent. That is kept on by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. The wheat-growers of this country get a certain price for their wheat. Offals can be sold at a certain price but, through the action of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, they are paying a higher price for wheat offals than they should.

I listened to the speeches of some of the Deputies on the Minister's Estimate and it was proved pretty clearly that pig producers lost about £600,000 on the purchase of wheat offals. It is essential that feeding stuffs should be provided at a reasonable price; that would be a better proposition so far as pig producers and farmers are concerned. However, it is satisfactory that, when grade A bacon is produced, if in the future there is a slump say in the British market, farmers will not suffer a very severe loss. That is satisfactory but it is only one step that should be taken to put the whole pig industry on a better footing. It is one step but there are others which the Minister could take and which, in order to remedy the injustices and the chaotic state of affairs at the moment, he must take if we are to have a steady pig industry. It is only by having a steady pig industry and steady production that we can hope to have an export market. If we have fluctuations, if we have a glut at one time and a scarcity at another time, we cannot hope to get and to hold an export market.

Mr. Allen

I should like more information from the Minister about the necessity for this £50,000. I suppose the Minister hopes to spend it well and to increase pig production. No portion is being spent on live pigs. It is not applicable to live pigs but to grade A bacon only. Who will grade it? Will it be graded on this side or on the far side? Will it be graded in our factories here and will that be accepted in England as that type of bacon and will we be paid on that grading? Assuming a market is found for grade B or grade X, or whatever grade you like, will any subsidy be paid on that?

I do not know if the Minister has a clear mind on this at all—that he is going to export only grade A bacon and to give the factories here, at the expense of the taxpayers and the pig producer, a certain subsidy. Would the Minister give us the date when pigs were last under 235/- a cwt.? Would the Minister tell us when the factories had to sell bacon under that figure? I think it was between 1948 and 1951 when the Minister was Minister for Agriculture in the first Coalition Government. The Minister held the same portfolio then as he now holds. At their present rate, I do not see any reason for this step at all. In my view, farmers should be levied only on the grade A pigs. It is unfair to levy them on other than grade A pigs.

The Minister knows that, at the moment, the price for pigs, other than grade A pigs, is uneconomic. There is a big danger in this whole matter. This Vote will not affect it but the big danger of this levy on the whole of pig production is that over 50 per cent. of the pigs going into the factory are graded other than grade A and farmers are getting a very uneconomic price for them, on the present price of feeding. They are just getting their money out of grade A pigs and the profit is very limited. Fifty per cent. of the pigs are not grade A pigs. Why should there be a levy of 4/11 on a low grade pig? I think that is wrong. It will further depress the price that will be paid to the farmers for those uneconomic pigs, as we will call them, from his point of view.

Was there a necessity or was there a good reason for bringing in grading when we have no bacon for export? If the Minister hoped to increase the pig population by bringing in grading at a time when pig production was falling in the country, he did a definite injury to the chance of increasing production by bringing in grading at the time he did. There was no necessity for grading for the home market because bacon is sold across the counter to the consumer at whatever grade it comes into the grocer's shop.

The introduction of grading would have been all right if we had a surplus of bacon for export but we do not need any boosting up from either the Exchequer or the levy on the pigs we have at the moment for selling whatever we have on the home market. I think the Minister will have to agree with me on that. That is an aspect of the whole matter of pig production about which the Minister cannot do anything. He cannot help the producers in any way to enable them to have more grade A pigs going into the factory. There is little or nothing he can do about it. He can talk about pig testing or tell the farmers to feed their pigs on barley or skimmed milk. I suppose there is not enough skimmed milk in those parts of the country where pigs are reared to feed it to them. Generally, the pig fattening areas are not the areas where the most skimmed milk is available. I think that will be shown from the returns of pig production in the larger dairying areas. Pig production in those areas is much lower than it is in areas where there is little or no skimmed milk available for feeding to the pigs. I suggest to the Minister that this carcase levy is being imposed at an inopportune time.

I do not know whether or not there is any definite sign of an increase in pig production at the moment. I am afraid there is not, because the price of feeding stuffs is very high. This grading will have a detrimental effect. In its own way, it is preventing a chance to increase pig production.

I have nothing further to say because if I spoke of mill offals on this Vote I might be ruled out of order. The Minister must know fairly definitely by now that the increase in the price of mill offals reduced the number of pigs available in this country by 20 per cent. in the first 15 or 16 months of his term of office. In that instance the Minister, who is supposed to look after the interests of the farmers of this country, deliberately surrendered his rights to the Minister for Finance in order, I suppose, that flour and bread might be subsidised.

Mr. Dillon

I often wonder what effect Dáil Eireann has upon people. If you met Deputy Allen at a meeting of the county committee of agriculture in Wexford he would strike you as a perfectly rational, reasonable kind of man. He will be critical but at least he will be rational. Transport him into Dáil Eireann and you will find he will say every mischievous thing he can think of.

Mr. Allen

I have said it a thousand times in Wexford.

Mr. Dillon

The general supposition seems to be that you should not produce more pigs. Deputy Allen says they will not pay. He says the pig producers are being mulcted, that they are not getting a fair chance.

Mr. Walsh

I do not think that is right.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Minister must be allowed to make his statement.

Mr. Allen

The Minister should not misrepresent me.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Chair cannot decide whether the Deputy is being misrepresented or not.

Mr. Dillon

Deputy Allen is no child in this House.

Mr. Allen

I am concerned with the decrease in production.

Mr. Dillon

He is concerned to make mischief.

Mr. Cunningham

Like the Irish Press.

Mr. Dillon

The whole of this argument has proceeded on the basis that this 235/- per cwt. guarantee is a fixed price. It is not. It is a minimum price.

Mr. Cunningham

Nobody said it was a fixed price.

Mr. Dillon

Yes they did. It has been most eloquently argued that the increases in the price of mill offals and feeding stuffs had operated purely to exploit pig producers who could get only 235/- per cwt. for their grade A pigs. The plain fact is that at the present moment, grade A pigs are fetching from 250/- to 260/- a cwt. at the factory.

Mr. Cunningham

Therefore, why the levy of 4/7d?

Mr. Dillon

All the history of pig production in this country has been that every Fianna Fáil órator who ever got up to speak in public proclaims it to be the inevitable future that when prices reach a remunerative level, if production increases, the bottom falls out of the price. Here is the guarantee that, no matter how far pig production is increased, the price cannot fall below a certain level for grade A pigs. The whole purpose of this scheme is to enable us to say to the farmers that if they produce enough pigs to provide us with a substantial export surplus, the price will not fall below a certain level. A number of people apprehend that the price will collapse if the production goes up. The scheme guarantees the farmers that if they increase the number of pigs they produce by 2,000,000, it does not matter; they will still get not less than 235/- a cwt. for their grade A pigs. Deputy Allen asks why not make it 250/- a cwt. The answer is we cannot afford it. We are back in a buyer's market. Up to a fortnight ago, the pigs and bacon agreement I made with the British Government in 1951 was in operation. That has come to an end and now we are in competition with the whole world.

Mr. Allen

Why did pigs fall by 20 per cent. in numbers under that agreement?

Mr. Dillon

Now we are in competition with the whole world and we have to reassure our producers that, while adapting themselves to that situation, the Government are prepared to ensure that, whatever other Governments do on the Continent, they will not be asked to accept a price lower than 235/- a cwt. No foreign producers will be allowed to create a situation on the foreign market in which we trade calculated seriously to prejudice our farmers while they produce grade A bacon. If there is no danger in the outside market the scheme can do no harm. If there is danger, the farmers have the guarantee that, upon whomso ever it impinges, it cannot impinge upon them.

Deputy Cunningham—I do not blame him, for he knows nothing about it— cheerfully envisages a situation in which there will be no draw upon this fund. He says the necessity might not arise in the present year or next year. That is a type of optimism characteristic of East Donegal which does Deputy Cunningham credit. I know that, when you are dealing with youth, it is good to have the optimistic viewpoint and to think that every cloud has a silver lining; but I think Deputies Allen and Walsh will be able to tell him that the possibility of this fund not being called upon is so remote as to make it almost unnecessary to consider. However, if it does arise that we do accumulate a growing fund on which we are not called upon to draw, I assure the Deputy I shall be very glad.

Mr. Cunningham

So will the Minister for Finance, who already to-day raided a fund.

Mr. Dillon

So long as there is there a sum sufficient to guarantee our producers against any possibility of a collapse of price, I shall give Deputy Cunningham a guarantee that nobody but the pig producers will enjoy that fund.

Mr. Walsh

What about the coarse grain fund that was raided?

Mr. Dillon

Deputy Walsh should not be so barefaced as that. Is it not true that Deputy Walsh himself agreed to have £100,000 transferred from that fund to the Exchequer?

Mr. Walsh

What about the £600,000?

Mr. Dillon

Deputy Walsh directed that £100,000 would be surrendered to the Exchequer out of the coarse grain account. I succeeded in getting that direction cancelled.

Mr. Walsh

But how much was in the fund?

Mr. Dillon

Is that not true? The £100,000 has not yet been transferred.

Mr. Walsh

What about the £600,000?

Mr. Dillon

The only transfer from that coarse grain account was that directed by Deputy Walsh. That direction did not succeed because I cancelled it and it is still there for the benefit of the barley growers.

Mr. Allen

To keep barley at £20 a ton and to make mill offals £25 a ton.

Mr. Dillon

Surely I shall be allowed to say a word? I listened here quietly to the Deputies, to all this rattle about mill offals. That was a fraud and a racket operated by Deputy Corry who is as cute as a Christian. The fact that prices of pollard, bran and mill offals are so high is related to world prices. The proof of that is that if Deputy Cunningham, Deputy Allen, Deputy Walsh or Deputy Collins can buy bran or pollard cheaper anywhere in the world they can bring it into this country freely, and many are bringing in pollard at the present time.

Mr. Cunningham

The Minister has stopped it.

Mr. Dillon

At no time has there been any restriction on anyone bringing pollard from Great Britain, the Argentine, Canada, the United States or anywhere else they can get it cheaper.

Mr. Cunningham

That is not an answer.

Mr. Dillon

How else are you going to regulate the price?

Mr. Cunningham

The economic price.

Mr. Dillon

Perhaps Deputies on the other side do not realise that coarse grains in this country at the present time are approximately £3 a ton lower than the world price and that is as a result of the fortunate purchases that were made at the beginning of this year.

Mr. Allen

Sorghums?

Mr. Dillon

Maize, barley and sorghums. I want to warn Deputies that they are likely to go up. Relate that to a price for pigs of 250/- to 260/-. As I say, the price of coarse grains here at the present time is £3 a ton below world price and the price is likely to go up before it comes down.

Mr. Walsh

Then why not have more barley grown here?

Mr. Dillon

I have been asking the Deputy's co-operation to secure that result but I cannot say that Deputy Allen's contribution to the debate to-day is calculated very substantially to help.

Mr. Walsh

If the Minister had not cut the price, he might have got better results.

Mr. Dillon

I think we shall get a good production. The essential barley to produce in this country is the barley that will not have to pass through the millers' hands. Deputy Cunningham is talking about the man who grows barley, sells it and then buys it back again. There is the heart of the evil. Why does he sell it and buy it back although it costs him 100 per cent. more when he buys it back? That is an exaggeration, I agree, but the man who sells barley and then buys back compound feeding stuff is inviting the miller, the sack manufacturer, the wholesaler, the transport company, to take a handful of feathers out of it.

Mr. Cunningham

And the Department of Industry and Commerce.

Mr. Dillon

Why does he not grow the barley, grind it on his own farm and feed it to his own pigs? What is the use of arguing that we ought to have a situation in which we emphasise the desirability of doing the very thing to which Deputy Cunningham referred, growing barley, selling it and buying it back again? The man who does that is losing a very substantial part of the profits he ought to get. I want him to produce and grind his own barley and only in so far as he is producing more pigs than his land is capable of feeding, in that event and in that event only, to buy feeding stuffs from abroad.

Mr. Walsh

If I am in a position to grow 200 barrels surplus to my needs, why not provide a market for it? Why bring it from the far ends of the earth rather than give me a market for that surplus?

Mr. Dillon

Would the Deputy allow me to make my speech? I allowed him to do so.

Mr. Walsh

I merely ask the question.

Mr. Dillon

The answer is quite simple. If the farmer who is producing this extra barley is to get the full return for it, he should feed it himself. If he does not feed it himself, then some other farmer has to buy it. The problem is, if you want to fix a price of 48/- for surplus barley produced by the barley grower in Kilkenny, Laois and East Cork, who has to pay it? The man who has to pay the 48/-, or the end price based on 48/-, is the pig feeder in West Cork, West Donegal, in Mayo and Galway—the smallest farmers in this country. What I want the small farmer to do is to grow his own barley and to purchase only the requirements over and above that which his own land is capable of producing.

I want to put it to some of the farmers who are at present growing large acreages of barley that they might with advantage try to keep more pigs and feed more pigs. The ideal situation from my point of view is that every farmer should grow all the coarse grains he requires on his own holding. There will be some enterprising farmers who will feed more pigs than the number for which their own land is capable of growing grain and they will buy in the most advantageous market.

Mr. Walsh

My barley is worth as much, pound for pound, as what the Minister brings from across the water.

Mr. Dillon

It is for that reason I have felt able to say that in the situation in which we find ourselves now, while the ideal is that the farmer should grow whatever barley he requires to feed his own pigs, it will be possible to ensure that those who grow a surplus will not get less than 40/- a barrel for it. What we must bear in mind in regard to the relatively well-to-do farmer who growing a surplus of 200 barrels, and from that up, with a minimum guaranteed price, is that it is the small farmer who is feeding pigs who has to pay it. You must try to weigh up the relative claims of those two farmers in trying to secure a guaranteed price for surplus barley production.

Mr. Walsh

Give the Irish farmer the world price.

Mr. Dillon

Deputy Walsh knows as well as I do that to give the Irish farmer the world price for his barley would be very poor inducement to him to produce barley at the present time. You must bear in mind that barley produced here has to be dried, stored and transported. By the time you have paid 40/- a barrel for it, it will always compare in quality but rarely in price with barley available from foreign sources. There was a time when the disparity in price between barley grown here for sale and the price at which barley was available from foreign sources was so wide that you could not contemplate asking the pig producer here to carry it because it would have put him out of all competitive capacity as opposed to his rivals in foreign markets, but now with increased yields of feeding barley varieties, I am not without hope that it may be possible largely to substitute barley of Irish production for imported coarse grains.

Mr. Walsh

Of course it is, and always has been.

Mr. Dillon

Do not clatter at me. The Deputy was "foosthering" around trying to do that and the first time he guaranteed the price at 48/- a barrel he lost a quarter of a million pounds——

Mr. Walsh

I lost nothing.

Mr. Dillon

——and the ridiculous situation arose in which the miller was buying back barley from him in January, having been paid for drying it and having been paid for storing it. The millers then compelled him to sell it back for substantially less than he paid for it and he lost a quarter of a million pounds in one year. That kind of thing helps nobody.

Mr. Walsh

Can the Minister prove it?

Mr. Dillon

The Deputy has said all he is going to be let say. The aim I have is to try to build up a situation in which we will be able substantially to substitute home-grown barley for imported coarse grains but, in doing that, we must keep plainly before our minds the relative claims of the comparatively well-to-do farmer who grows it and the comparatively poor farmer who consumes it. The price of pollard is strictly related to the world price. The test of that is that anybody can import all the pollard he can get anywhere and certain persons are doing it. No mill in Ireland could get an excess price for pollard at the present time, because people can bring it in from anywhere, and if they could buy it cheaper anywhere else, they would. Some people find that they can buy it as cheap, or fractionally cheaper, and so they do bring it in.

The situation can arise in which they want pollard in Cork; there is pollard in Dublin, and the net result is that the transport charge from Dublin to Cork makes Dublin pollard dearer in Cork than the price at which they can get pollard from Argentina by sea and so they bring it into Cork.

Anybody can bring pollard from any part of the world and if he can get it cheaper than the price at which it can be had in Ireland, he is quite free to bring it in in any quantity. That is the only means of deciding what price should obtain for mill offals in this country. That is the only criterion that applies—that the world price—no more—can be charged.

An argument can be made that you ought to subsidise pollard and sell it at less than the world price. Does anybody suggest that we ought to subsidise pollard?

Mr. Cunningham

That is not the argument.

Mr. Dillon

Is the world price, then, not the fair price?

Mr. Cunningham

The economic price.

Mr. Dillon

What do you mean by the "economic price"?

Mr. Cunningham

The price of production.

Mr. Dillon

Pollard is a by-product of flour.

Mr. Walsh

Would the Minister look back and ask himself this question: how did we succeed in exporting bacon and pork up to 1954 at the prices that obtained for feeding stuffs at that time and how is it that we have failed to export bacon and pork since 1954?

Mr. Dillon

Deputy Walsh should not ask such an idiotic question. Deputy Walsh knows full well that, under the Pigs and Bacon Agreement with Great Britain, we had a guaranteed price for pork and a guaranteed price for bacon, that we equated these two prices and so were able to pay a wholly artificial price and that that enabled us to export pork and bacon. The Deputy knows that perfectly well. I do not expect some of the other Deputies to know it, but he knows that that enabled us to maintain prices in this country for pigs out of all relation to world prices. That was done under the Trade Agreement of 1951, negotiated by me. It was a particularly fortunate and profitable agreement. That is the reason it was possible to do that up to the end of that agreement. Now we have an open market and this scheme is designed to ensure that there will be no collapse of that.

Mr. Walsh

Was it not in operation until last week or the week before?

Mr. Dillon

Have sense. One other proposition was made here. I have the feeling that people do not reflect sufficiently before they make a proposition. It is a very alluring proposition and I can well see how certain people not familiar with the trade might be wholly deceived by it, that is, that there are grade A, B and C pigs but there is no grade A, B and C bacon in shops. No one can tell with certainty what prices are obtaining in the shops. I do know—this information is available to anybody who wants to consult the price lists of the bacon curers which are available to anybody who wants to get them—that, as of 12th May, one factory is offering leanest bacon at 340/-, lean at 328/-, medium at 308/- and stout at 290/-. There is a differential of 50/- a cwt. between the leanest bacon offered and the stout bacon. That is a much wider disparity than the disparity which exists between the top price offered for pigs and the lowest price offered for pigs.

Mr. Walsh

80/-.

Mr. Dillon

The figures I have here from grade A to grade C range from 260/- to 215/-.

Mr. Walsh

No.

Mr. Dillon

These are the prices published in the daily papers.

Mr. Walsh

Grade X, 180/-.

Mr. Dillon

There is very little grade X bacon. People ask: "Where is this bacon when you get to the shop?" The answer is that if you put stout bacon, smoked or pale cured, on the counter, there it will stay because no one will buy it.

Mr. Allen

What do they do with it?

Mr. Dillon

It very largely goes into hard salt.

Mr. Allen

That is a dead trade, too.

Mr. Dillon

The Deputy speaks from the depth of his ignorance. He knows Wexford perhaps, but he does not know Donegal and the West of Ireland.

Mr. Allen

There is less than 4 per cent. of the bacon produced going into hard salt.

Mr. Dillon

I know the Deputy can be as obscurantist as he wishes, but the plain fact is that a man can go tomorrow and buy what is graded as stout bacon at 290/- a cwt. and, if he buys it and puts it on his counter, in 90 per cent. of the country, it will stay on the counter because no retail customer wants to buy it.

Mr. Cunningham

If there is nothing else on the counter?

Mr. Dillon

If there is nothing else on the counter, they will go to another shop. The women of this country have not become so crippled that they cannot go from one shop to another, as any shopkeeper in the country well knows. If you offer stout bacon in any grocer's or provision shop in this country at the present time, with the exception of a very few isolated places, nobody will buy it and the people will go to another shop until they find the quality of bacon that they want.

The great difficulty is that to dispose of fat bacon is rapidly becoming impossible. When Deputy Allen asks why do we not guarantee grades A, B and C, the answer is: for the simple reason that there is no market for grade C. There is no use in my going to the farmers and saying: "I can guarantee a market for grades A, B and C." The time is rapidly coming when grade C will be unsaleable. Grade B bacon is hard to sell and, in our extern markets, very hard to sell——

Mr. Walsh

It is the most expensive food that is produced.

Mr. Dillon

——and is becoming more and more difficult to sell. I am telling the farmers now that the only bacon for which there is a guaranteed market, which may go above 235/-, but may not go below it, is grade A bacon. If you want to make mischief, you can start the propaganda that you cannot produce grade A bacon——

Mr. Walsh

No; there is nobody doing it.

Mr. Dillon

——and, if you do produce it, it will not pay you and you are paying a rebate in the price of feeding stuffs.

Mr. Allen

They all know it.

Mr. Dillon

That kind of codology is designed to make mischief. I often wonder why the members of the Fianna Fáil Party do it. It is the most contemptible kind of sabotage, because, of course, it is true that when people hear Deputy Allen, Deputy Walsh and Deputy Corry saying that kind of thing, some of them will believe it and they will shrug their shoulders.

Mr. Corry

They heard the Minister in Offaly and we know what they told him.

Mr. Dillon

The plain fact is that money is to be made out of the production of pigs at that price. The plain fact is that if farmers will collaborate with the Pigs and Bacon Marketing Commission in getting the right type of sow, if they will consult their agricultural instructor as to the best method of feeding their pigs and will ration the pigs within the last month or six weeks before they bring them to the factory to a maximum of 6 to 6½ lb. of meal and sufficient skim milk, the percentage of grade A pigs they produce will steadily rise.

I met a man quite recently who complained bitterly that the bonham he had got had graded C and when I asked him how he fed it, in perfect good faith, he said he rationed it until six weeks before he brought it to the factory and then fed it all it would eat. Of course, that man had just got the whole business upside down. He had just thrown his money away, because whatever strain or quality of pig he had, if he rationed it for the first five weeks and then overfed it for the last five weeks, he was bound to get a grade C pig or worse. If he had reversed the process, the possibility of his getting a grade A pig would have been increased substantially.

Mr. Allen

Why do you not suggest the pigs be fed on sherry and eggs, like racehorses?

Mr. Dillon

That is the kind of malicious mischief that goes on. I quite agree Fianna Fáil can do a great deal of harm by that kind of talk, if people believe them. Deputies Walsh and Allen know that if people believe them——

Mr. Walsh

We know a better way of doing it.

Mr. Dillon

We could build up a magnificent pig in this country to the great advantage of the smaller farmer who is the most in need of this supplement to his existing income. Such a practice would be an invaluable contribution to the balance of payments situation. Some farmers will believe what I am telling and others what Deputy Walsh tells them.

Mr. Walsh

I would have a bet with you that, if they followed my system, they would be doing much better.

Mr. Dillon

It would greatly help if both of us were telling them the same thing. I know it is in the power of Fianna Fáil to hinder this effort to produce more pigs, but it is a criminally irresponsible thing for them to do. They know that while they were in office they never attempted to do what Deputy Walsh now advocates. They know that while they were in office the pig population practically disappeared and that it came back again under the pigs and bacon agreement we made. I despair of getting from Fianna Fáil any constructive help in expanding agricultural production, because I believe they much prefer to play politics. I do not believe, however, that the people will believe them, that the people are so innocent as to swallow the rubbish about the price of pollard.

The acid test as to whether the price of pollard and mill offals is equitable is the fact that they would be imported freely by people, if they could buy them cheaper anywhere else in the world at the present time; the acid test is that the price of grade A pigs is ranging between 250/- and 260/- per cwt. The purpose of this scheme is not to fix the price, but to assure the producers that, whatever way the market goes, the price they will receive for grade A bacon will not fall below 235/-. The acid test is that the price of our feeding stuffs is £3 per ton below the world price which is likely to go up still further before it comes down again.

Mr. Corry

What about the £6 a ton on offals?

Mr. Dillon

Many shopkeepers know that if they stock stout bacon they will not be able to sell it because the people want lean bacon. If you offer them fat bacon at any discount, people will not buy it, except in the West where there is a taste for hard cured bacon, which is on sale at a price substantially below that ruling for the mild cured or smoked bacon.

The last thing I want to mention is Deputy Allen's query as to why grading should be introduced before there was an exportable surplus. The answer to that is that it had to be because the pig and bacon industry will not survive, except on grading, and the sooner we make it clear that the pig and bacon industry will not survive unless we come to the position in which we have grade A pigs in the vast majority, a relative sprinkling of grade B and no grade C——

Mr. Walsh

Is it not true that from 1951 to 1954 we had as many grade A pigs as we have now?

Mr. Dillon

——the better for the industry. That must be the indissoluble basis associated with the future of the industry. It is rendering a grave disservice to the farmer of this country to tell him there is any future for the pig industry except on that basis. The reason I introduced grading was that I knew we must raise the standard of the pig produced in this country if we are to maintain an export trade, much less expand it. It would be impossible for us to hold our position in the British market, except on the basis of the grade A pig. We must bear that in mind. The Danes are a different kind of people from us. They are quite prepared to eat grade B and grade C and to send all their grade A bacon to Britain. Our people will not. I have often been reminded how much more efficient and how wiser the Danes are. I am not so sure they are; I am not so sure our people are not right.

The Danes, however, are disciplined into this way. From the point of view of national economics, that may be a good proposition, but it must be borne in mind that the same people eat margarine and export their butter. Our people will not do that; our people eat their butter and only when they have eaten all the butter they want, and all the Irish butter at that, will they allow the balance to be exported. Remember what we are competing against. The Danish people export their butter and eat margarine; our people not only insist on consuming butter but demand that they be afforded a full supply of Irish butter. It is costing us £250,000 a year in order to indulge the desire of our people to eat Irish butter. If, in years of plenty, we exported our surplus butter and, in years of scarcity, imported New Zealand butter, we would be avoiding storage charges and I believe it would mean a saving to us of £250,000. That may be self-indulgence to the point of extravagance.

Mr. Walsh

It would be only in keeping with your policy of bringing in wheat when we could grow our own.

Mr. Dillon

Many rational beings say that we pay £250,000 a year on the storage of butter, in order to ensure not only that we have butter, but that we will have Irish butter during the 12 months of the year, instead of selling our butter during the season of plenty and purchasing it from New Zealand in the season of scarcity. Our people will not accept that proposition. The Danes export all their grade A bacon and eat grades B and C. We have got to face that and our objective must lead to the elimination of grade C and other grades and to maximise the output of grade A and B, aiming ultimately at eliminating grade B. I do not deny that is an objective which, we must realise, is relatively remote.

Mr. Walsh

Might I ask a question of the Minister?

Mr. Dillon

Whisht, now.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order!

Mr. Dillon

Deputy Cunningham asked if there would be any restriction on the export of live pigs. None, except this: our live pigs going into Great Britain do not qualify for the price bounty which is available to British producers, but I do not want to mislead the House—I do not think at the present time that the prospects of live pig exports are very good, but I think it is reasonable to suggest that that possibility should have a stabilising influence on the market as a whole. I do not altogether despair of the situation arising in which pigs of grades B and C might find——

Mr. Walsh

That is just a sidewind by Deputy T. Lynch.

Mr. Dillon

That is a very ignorant interruption. It is possible that might develop into an export trade, as in the years gone by, but as we have not had exports of live pigs since 1939 or earlier, the question is whether or not the market for these grades survives. If it does, I believe that those who deal in live pigs will find it, but I do not want to hold out any prospects, from the information available to me, of that being very valuable, at least in our present circumstances. I am quite certain, if there is a trade to be found there, those long associated with the live pig export trade will find it, and if they do—if they are able to find it— they will be doing a very great service to the pig producers of this country and they have my best wishes for success in any efforts they make.

I believe this scheme holds good promise of removing from the whole pig production industry the great hazard that heretofore has habitually hampered it in its development by removing absolutely the possibility of any collapse in price. And I do not think we should underestimate one other thing which it does and to which I wish to direct the attention of Deputies who may desire to see this trade expand: it provides, for the first time, a buffer grade. I do not deny I have always felt it a hardship on a man who brought in a pig which was in every respect grade A, except in that one respect that it exceeded the maximum weight prescribed by 1 lb. or 2 lb., and who found himself cut 10/- or 15/- per cwt. To meet that situation, we have created a new buffer grade called grade B (1), so that the man who has a grade A pig which exceeds the maximum of 1 cwt. 2 qrs., but does not exceed that maximum by more than 7 lb., will be cut no more than about 5/- per cwt. in the price of his pig. I think that will help very greatly those who are honestly trying to produce the right grade of pigs.

In conclusion, I want to say that I believe this scheme will commend itself on its own merits to the people, but I would welcome the assistance of all those who are prepared to help on every side of the House in telling those with whom their opinion carries weight that it is worth while feeding pigs now on barley and skimmed milk, and that those who will make most out of this plan will be the pig producers who grow their own barley and have their own skimmed milk. If those who have not these commodities will buy the barley from their neighbours and grind it themselves, they will be one degree better off than the man who buys expensive compound feeding stuffs. I would recommend them to aim at increased production on barley and skimmed milk—barley, preferably of their own production, but if not, purchased from their neighbours, directly if possible, and then ground in their local mill or in their own farmyard by grinder or hammer-mill, if they have rural electrification——

Mr. D. Allen

Could they not buy something smaller than a six-ton lot?

Mr. Dillon

If they buy from the local farmers, they can buy any quantity they like.

Mr. Allen

C.I.E. will not let them.

Mr. Dillon

If neither of these two courses is available, they should depend on pure barley meal rather than compound foods which, I think, with skimmed milk are unnecessary. It is certainly true that, where skimmed milk is not available, protein feeding stuffs must be supplemented, and in those circumstances it may be best for a farmer to depend on a reliable type of compound-feeding, lest his own efforts to combine minerals and proteins with barley might prove inadequate. But for the generality, I would ask them to use barley meal supplemented with one lb. of salt per cwt. of barley, and the skimmed milk available from their own creameries. I would ask them to expand pig production indefinitely, in the certainty that there is no possibility of a collapse in the price from this time forward. I would ask them to do it in the knowledge that they are benefiting themselves—which is all important—and in this particular case, they will be doing the additional valuable work of helping the nation.

Mr. Walsh

We have been doing our best to keep the Minister from making a mess of it and we have failed. There is nothing further we can do now.

Vote put and agreed to.