Before embarking on the discussion of this Bill, I cannot forbear from saying a word about the lamented passing of the late Senator Moylan. His absence from our discussion here to-day is the cause of profound regret to every member of this House. He was an energetic participant in the public life of the country and a political opponent of mine throughout my whole participation in politics here, as I was of his.
I would avail myself of this opportunity of putting it on record that he was a good man, but what is so precious in the public life of the country, he was a man who held his beliefs courageously and vigorously and in holding them thus still was able to conduct pretty formidable controversies in which he was involved from time to time with courtesy and kindness which adorned his participation in public life and which contributed materially to the elevation of conduct of those who have partaken in public life and may very well serve as an example to those who follow after him.
That much being said, Sir, I have to draw the attention of the House to what the Acting Minister has already said, that this is in fact a Bill which I introduced last December, save in respect of Section 7, which is an addition. I want to agree cordially and emphatically with what the Acting Minister said in regard to the genesis of this whole institute proposal and various other schemes for the improvement of agriculture to which he referred.
Many of them would have been impossible, all of them must have been long postponed, but for the princely generosity of the Government of the U.S.A., who made the funds available and thus made it possible for us to undertake these enterprises now.
In the special context of the Agricultural Institute, I should like to recall with emphasis a name mentioned by the Acting Minister also, that is, Mr. Joseph Carrigan, who came here as the first representative of the Economic Mission to Ireland under the Marshall Plan. I was then Minister for Agriculture and I should like to place it on record how deeply indebted this country is to Mr. Joseph Carrigan, how invaluable a friend he was of every agricultural interest in Ireland and with what delicate courtesy and skill he discharged the important functions of the mission entrusted to him by the Government of the United States.
I should like to recall the fact that he attained in this country, by the force of his personality and by the delicate tact with which he discharged his mission, the position that we looked upon him as one of our own. When I say that, I do not mean that we looked upon him as one who gave approval in anticipation to everything we proposed —far from it—but he attained a position in which he felt free and was free to speak to us with the same frankness and the same emphasis that would normally be allowed to one of our own people.
I remember pressing upon him with confidence the invitation to come into our Department of Agriculture and to speak to me or to any officer of it as though he were in his own Department of Agriculture in Vermont or in Washington, in the certain knowledge that we would similarly speak to him, we knowing that he would understand our attitude and we knowing that he was motivated by nothing but the desire to promote the interest of Irish agriculture, the mission upon which he was dispatched here by the United States of America. If and when this institute comes to be established, those of us who know the history of this will for ever associate it with the name of Joe Carrigan and will gratefully recall all the work he did during every day of his association with us.
In making that reference to him, I do not want in any way to detract from the distinguished successors who subsequently replaced him when he was called back to his duties at the University of Vermont; but I should be less than frank if I did not assert that Joe Carrigan is the name which comes first to my mind in regard to this.
We shall not forget, when this institute is established, the very material contribution that was also made by a man who was subsequently the Ambassador of the United States in this country, Mr. William Howard Taft III, for he was Mr. Carrigan's assistant here in the early stages of the Marshall Plan and contributed very greatly to the work of which this institute forms part. Of course as we all know, though it is not relevant to this occasion, he subsequently contributed greatly to the mutual good will which binds us to America and America to us, when he came back as American Ambassador.
I cannot find any fault with the statement of the Acting Minister in introducing this Bill. I think what he said was a pretty reasonable record of all that had passed. At one stage he said there were those who felt, when this matter was first considered, that the most desirable form that this institute should take would be an independent university on the lines of Wageningen in Holland. As the Acting Minister said, there is a good deal to be said for that point of view. I am not prepared to dissent from that observation of the Acting Minister. I am not at all sure that, if we were dealing with an ideal solution, that is not the ideal solution. As the Acting Minister pointed out, the proposal fell short even of that ideal. It evoked a protracted controversy and a variety of interests expressing the strongest possible views.
I know a number of people are inclined to say it is a strange thing that one should accept less than the ideal, but unfortunately in the world in which we live it is not always possible to attain to the ideal because one cannot always persuade everybody that what one believes to be the ideal is the best thing. The difference between our form of Government and the authoritarian form of Government is that, while the Government may have certain views or individuals may have certain views, the process of democratic government is to try to get substantial agreement for the decision which the Parliament of the country ultimately takes.
I believe this Bill represents the nearest that could be arrived at to a substantial implementation of the various views that were pressed by those whose representations were entitled to a hearing. In so far as it is that, it has in it many of the flaws of compromise but we must bear in mind that life on this side of Heaven is going to be an imperfect thing and those who hope to find Heaven on earth are scheduled for disappointment. All we can hope to achieve here is the nearest approach to perfection that it is practical to reach.
That brings me to paragraph 11 of the Acting Minister's statement. I agree with him entirely when he says that the whole scheme of the Bill revolves round the council and it is not too much to say that the potential value of the institute will be directly proportionate to the efficiency of the council in discharging the heavy responsibility entrusted to it. That is profoundly true. I have always believed, and I still believe, that neither Parliament, the Government nor the Minister can run a university nor, indeed, any teaching establishment. You have got to try to get the best governing body you can. You have got to give them the resources and then you have got to trust them to do the job and if they do not do it there is not very much you can do about it.
Our concern must be to try and get the very best council that we can. As to the five members of the council, they will be chosen by representative bodies of farmers. These representative bodies have on them a very grave responsibility to choose the best men because if they do not then the whole of this considerable enterprise can be placed in jeopardy. I trust and believe that the universities will be as circumspect and I hope the Government will be concerned to pick persons on merit to carry out the heavy responsibility that the Government representatives on this council will carry.
Section 7 provides that there shall be a director who will, in effect, be the executive officer as distinct from the chairman. It is one of these matters upon which I found it very difficult to make up my mind. There are two views. One is that we should make the chairman of the council the executive officer or make the chairman of the council a part-time chairman, having a director as distinct from the chairman. My recollection is that I leaned to the view, after protracted consideration, that it was better to have all these functions centred in the chairman but I am not prepared to say I regard it as a matter of principle. It is a matter upon which I would have been prepared to consult the House and accept the combined wisdom of the House either one way or the other. Both views have much to commend them and have inherent in them certain dangers. I have no convinced view on the proposal to provide a director in addition to the council itself.
I think there will probably be a blast of criticism against the Government in their proposal to appoint the first director, leaving the appointment of his successors to the council. I am prepared to support the Government in that proposal. I think they are right to reserve that right to themselves because they will have to answer to this House and posterity if they choose the wrong man, but in launching this I think the Government are entitled to take reasonable precautions to see that it gets off with a good council and a good director. Then they have not only the right but the duty to say: "Now from this out you are on your own and it depends on yourselves whether you succeed or not."
I do not suppose there is any more difficult task for a Deputy in Opposition than to make a speech about his own Bill and I find myself in that difficulty at the present time. I want this institute proposal to be a success. I believe it has a potential for great good for the agricultural industry. If the proposals outlined in this Bill are to succeed, the institute must have, and is entitled to expect to have, the wholehearted co-operation and goodwill of the universities.
I want to say this to the universities. This Institute Bill, as drafted, has in it the possibility of great benefit and great advantage for the universities who pull their weight and do their part in making the institute a success. If the institute does its job as it should do it, it should reciprocate a thousandfold whatever goodwill either university shows towards it. I sincerely hope and pray that no situation will arise in which there could develop any misunderstanding or lack of co-operation between the universities and the institute. Every interest for agricultural education in our universities could best be served by collaboration between the institute and the colleges—Trinity, Galway, Cork and U.C.D. I hope that will be forthcoming in abundant degree.
Some may ask: How is it that at this stage of our history these steps are being taken only now? The answer is that higher educational research in agriculture has not adequately been catered for heretofore. It is an unprofitable inquest to conduct in public as to why and how enough has not been done to date. The important thing is that I believe the means to do what is requisite in the future are now available.
There is one point now that I think has to be faced—and I notice that the Acting Minister did not refer to it. In the course of the controversies that ranged round these proposals, there was a good deal of argument as to whether the institute should not control the advisory services. Of course, a great deal of the argument was strangely ill-informed as most people work themselves up into a passion on the assumption that the advisory services throughout the country are controlled by the Minister for Agriculture—which is entirely false. The fact is that the agricultural instructors, as they are called, are the servants of the county committees of agriculture. The only direct control which the Minister for Agriculture exercises over the county committees is that they submit an annual scheme of the work they propose to undertake in the coming year which is subject to the approval of the Minister for Agriculture and which, in fact, is invariably approved, subject to consultation and discussion relative to minor matters in which, as a rule, the chief agricultural officer of the county committee is as anxious for advice as the Department is to give it.
There does survive from the old Congested Districts Board days the parish agent in the congested areas. However, with the passage of time, their advisory function, in the ordinary acceptance of the meaning of that word, has tended to decline and in many parts of the congested areas to-day they function largely as the administrative officers of the farm buildings scheme and certain other schemes of that kind. In the Gaeltacht proper, such as Connemara, they do retain advisory functions. In fact, I think in West Galway the county committee of agriculture leaves most of the advisory work to these officers, but they represent a relatively insignificant section of the purely advisory work in the country as a whole.
I myself, as Minister for Agriculture, established the parish plan. Under that, where parishes organised themselves in groups of three to seek advisory services in excess of what the county committee of agriculture was in a position to provide, they could apply to the Minister for Agriculture for an advisory agent and they got him. I am bound to say that I found that that system worked very well. I take the view—and in this I know I differ from the accepted practice in the United States—that the advisory services should, directly or indirectly, be under the Minister for Agriculture. In so far as they function as the servants of the county committee of agriculture, I think that system works reasonably well, if it is properly supervised, if the instructors are required to do their work, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, they are enabled to do it. However, there are many parts of the country in which the instructors are spread so thinly on the ground that a great deal of their time is spent moving from place to place and trying to fill up their diaries, and there is not time to do really constructive advisory work of the kind that is so urgently necessary.
I believe, and I never believed it with greater conviction than I do to-day, that if advisory work is to be put upon a satisfactory basis an adviser ought to have a fixed area for which he is personally responsible, so that he can see for himself the fruit of his own labour. I believe the ultimate ideal to aim at would be to provide one adviser for every rural parish in Ireland—and there are 800 of them. But, ad interim, I was prepared to aim at one adviser for each three parishes in rural Ireland, thus providing approximately one adviser for every 1,000 farms. In so far as I realised that objective, notably in Longford, Leitrim, Monaghan, Cork, Tipperary, Waterford and Roscommon, for example, I think the results abundantly justified the procedure. Where a parish agent had three parishes for which he was personally responsible, and kept in constant contact with all the farmers, large and small, in the area, the results were abundantly there to see.
Anyone who wishes to study the result of the operations of a parish agent, with the cordial co-operation of everybody in the parish, need only read the history of the experiment in the parish of Bansha, West Tipperary. But, over and above Bansha, I would now be prepared to invite anyone who wanted to test the validity of that procedure to visit any of the three parish units where a parish agent appointed by the Minister for Agriculture in the course of the past three years has been operating and to judge by the success or failure of the procedure of any one of these three-parish groups. I think, if a fair and impartial judgment were made in respect of any one of them—and they are not all equally good—an honest critic would be obliged to concede that that is the right line to proceed upon.
I have a profound conviction that, unless there is a common purpose from the Minister for Agriculture all the way down to the advisory services, you will get growing confusion and mutual frustration. I know there are some who could argue if I say that, that what I mean is that the Minister for Agriculture is going to exercise day-to-day supervision over every instructor in Ireland, and that the bureaucracy of the Department of Agriculture is going to paralyse every man's desire to serve. Anybody who has an experience knows that kind of talk is all cod. The great objective is to get a good man into his own area, and give him the widest possible discretion to serve the people whom he is sent to serve in that area, to the best of his ability. The test of his success or failure will not be reports or diaries; it will be nothing but results, with the clear understanding that there are no alibis and no use in coming back and saying the people are very difficult to get on with.
Part of the good instructor's job is to get on with difficult people. There is no use in coming back and saying the soil is too poor. Part of the good instructor's duty is to know how to exploit poor soil as well as good soil, and to get on with conservative people as well as radical people. In so far as county committees of agriculture were prepared to put that service into operation it was all to the good. In so far as they are not in a position to do it I think it is the duty of the Minister for Agriculture.
I believe the function of the institute is to direct research and contribute to higher education where that is necessary, either directly or indirectly through the universities. I know the American system is to associate and, indeed direct, control of what they call "the extension services" through bodies analogous to what this agricultural institute is intended to be. I do not believe that the American practice is suited to our circumstances. I believe that something between the British system of a national agricultural advisory service and the American system is what we require but, if I had to make a choice, I would lean more in the direction of a national agricultural advisory service rather than in the direction of divorcing the whole system of instruction and advice from the Department of Agriculture where it ought to be.
I want to make this last point. One of the most important Departments of State in this country is the Department of Agriculture. On the success or failure of its mission the whole economic life of our country depends. It does not matter how good the Department of Agriculture is, if it does not get the wholehearted co-operation of the farmers of this country a great part of its efforts is frustrated. I do not believe the Department of Agriculture in Ireland is perfect. I do not believe any department of agriculture in the world is perfect but I want to record again, in the most formal possible way, something I have had occasion to refer to in public many times before. It has always been a source of dismay and horror to me to hear some of the public statements, in criticism of the officers of the Department of Agriculture, which are made in this country.
I have represented this country at many international conferences as Minister for Agriculture, at all of which I have been attended by staffs of administrative and technical officers of the Department of Agriculture. Again and again it has been my experience that I have been approached by various committees of international bodies asking for the services of the administrative and technical officers who accompanied me as my advisers. While I felt it was our duty, in so far as our resources permitted, to extend that co-operation whenever we could, again and again I have found myself in the position of saying we cannot meet all the requests pressed upon us because we have not got the men. At the moment officers of our Department of Agriculture are occupying highly responsible positions in international committees, because bodies representative of up to 70 and 75 independent States in these international conferences, working with these men, listening to them and judging the contributions they were capable of giving, have sought their assistance, not for any love of Ireland, but simply because there was not anybody as good, and certainly nobody better, to do the job that was required to be done.
What is it about us that makes us denigrate our own? We have some of the best material in the world in our Department of Agriculture. Let us be clear on this. There is no Department of State in any democratic country in the world in which there are not a few duds and we all know that. We are all conscious of the fact that in a great public service there are bound to be the good, the indifferent and, we hope, a microscopic minority of the bad; but it is important to emphasise that the Department of Agriculture in this country is capable of giving the people of this country a superb service, provided it receives from the people whom it serves that degree of confidence and co-operation which it is entitled to expect.
What is important to bear in mind is that the co-operation which I now bespeak from the universities for the institute is essential to the success of this enterprise. Something that is equally vital is that the universities and the institute will work in close and cordial co-operation with the Department of Agriculture and the Minister for Agriculture, who represents ultimately the sovereign power of this House, and who is the Minister charged with the responsibility of coming to this House looking for the means to carry on the work of this institute, and of the universities themselves.
The Acting Minister rightly said that splendid as is the endowment which it is possible to make available to the institute, from the moneys made available to us by the Government of the United States, he looked forward to Dáil Éireann appropriating from time to time such additional moneys as may be necessary adequately to lubricate the machinery of this institute. I bespeak from our people on behalf of the Minister for Agriculture, whoever he may be and whatever Government he belongs to, and especially from the farmers of this country, their support, their understanding and their co-operation. It is right that in this House and, indeed, outside it there should be controversy on policy where genuine difference exists. Nobody objects to that and nobody complains of that; but what is calculated to do great damage to the fundamental interests of this State is that a policy should be pursued of trying to create distrust and misunderstanding between the agricultural community and the Minister for Agriculture for the time being, whatever Party he belongs to.
Whether the Minister for Agriculture belongs to the Fianna Fáil Party, the Fine Gael Party, or any other Party, from time to time, as an individual, I proceed on the assumption that he is doing his best to serve the interests of that section of the community for which he has undertaken responsibility. I reserve the right to criticise and challenge the policies which he submits to the House, but there is all the difference in the world between criticising the policies he is proceeding to implement and criticising the desire that he has faithfully to serve the farming community of this country.
If we can get from all Parties the kind of co-operation that we ought to get, then this institute should do great good and, from this side of the House, I can assure the Acting Minister that anything we can do to help to that end will be faithfully done.