Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 14 Jul 1959

Vol. 176 No. 8

Committee on Finance. - Grass Meal (Production) (Amendment) Bill, 1959—Second Stage.

Minister for Industry and Commerce (Mr. J. Lynch)

I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time.

The purpose of the Bill is to provide for the establishment of a limited company to revive the project for the production of grass meal from grass grown on reclaimed bogland in the Bangor Erris area, Co. Mayo.

Deputies will recall that the Grass Meal (Production) Act, 1953, provided for the establishment of a limited company—Min Fhéir Teoranta—to undertake the drainage and cultivation of bogland in the Bangor Erris area, the processing of grass and other plants, and the carrying on of kindred and incidental activities. Min Fhéir Teoranta was incorporated in March, 1954, and in accordance with the provisions of the Act, its principal functions were the acquisition, drainage and cultivation of bogland and the processing of grass and other plants for sale, including, in particular, the manufacture of grass meal.

The nominal share capital of the Company was £100,000, to be subscribed by the Minister for Finance, and the Act also provided for grants, not exceeding in the aggregate £165,000, out of moneys to be provided by the Oireachtas to be applied in defraying capital expenses. The Company commenced operations in the spring of 1954 on the ploughing and sod fencing of lands at Glenamoy leased from Bord na Móna. It was proposed to have 500 acres ready for grass growing in 1955, and to bring a further 1,500 acres into cultivation at the rate of 500 acres a year. The Company also proposed to proceed immediately with the erection of a grass meal factory.

In June, 1955, the then Government decided that the plans for the erection of a grass meal factory should be abandoned and that portion of the lands occupied by the Company should be used by the Department of Agriculture for experiments on the reclamation of blanket bog and that the balance of the lands should be used by the Department of Lands for afforestation purposes. In accordance with these decisions, the affairs of the Company were wound up early in 1956.

In August, 1957, my predecessor appointed a Committee to examine the practicability of reviving the project, and the Report of the Committee was published in November, 1958. The principal conclusions in the Committee's Report which was unanimous, were that grass meal can be produced competitively in relation to current market prices from grass on reclaimed bogland after a period of five years from the commencement of reclamation, and that, taking account of the potential home and export trade, a market over and above that catered for or likely to be catered for by existing grass meal producers should be capable of development to provide an outlet for the output of a plant at Glenamoy.

The Committee recommended that the project should be revived and that an independent statutory company should be established to operate the project, and that the company should be provided with a sum not exceeding £165,000 by way of a non-repayable grant to defray capital expenses and a further sum of £30,000 in the form of share capital for working capital.

The Bill now before the House provides for the establishment of a limited company, Min Fhéir (1959) Teóranta, to which, with certain amendments, the provisions of the Grass Meal (Production) Act, 1953, shall apply. The principal amendment proposed in the provisions of the 1953 Act is that the share capital of the company shall be £200,000 instead of £100,000, the provision for the making of grants up to £165,000 to the company being at the same time dropped. This is the normal method of financing a company undertaking activities of an industrial or commercial character and has been adopted on the advice of the Minister for Finance, who will subscribe the share capital.

It is expected that the project will operate on an economic basis after an initial development period of five years. Deputies will appreciate the very great need, on economic and social grounds, for a suitable form of industrial development in an area completely devoid of normal development opportunities. The principle of granting financial assistance from State funds to counter the economic handicaps which would otherwise prevent the establishment of industries in such areas has already been accepted in the Undeveloped Areas Acts, and many centres in the less developed western part of the country have already benefited from the establishment of new industries with the aid of grants provided under these Acts.

However, the competitive disadvantages arising from remoteness from the main centres of consumption and the lack of indigenous raw materials make industrial development in areas such as Bangor Erris a matter of peculiar difficulty. The natural resources of these areas consist almost entirely of extensive peat bogs. Considerable progress has been made in the development of bogs for the production of peat as fuel. There are, however, areas of bogland that will not be required for the production of fuel for many years to come and the contribution of these bogs to the economy of the Western areas in particular and the country generally will be immeasurably enhanced by establishing that by drainage and cultivation they can provide the raw material for economic industrial activities.

Having considered the unanimous recommendations of the Committee, whose report was duly circulated to Deputies, and which, incidentally, I would commend to Deputies who have not yet read it, the Government are convinced that the establishment of a grass meal plant in the area concerned using as a raw material grass grown on reclaimed bogland, is a project eminently worthy of support and one to which I would ask the Dáil readily to assent to by agreeing to this measure.

Mr. Dillon

This is a peculiarly daft Fianna Fáil aberration. Grass meal is a raw material of the agricultural industry. Its only use is its incorporation into animal rations for conversion into livestock and the end product which is saleable, from the point of view of the agricultural industry, is the livestock reared on the compound feed of which grass meal constitutes a part. Up to about four or five years ago, grass meal was incorporated in compound feed for livestock, particularly for fowl, for two reasons: first, its protein content and, secondly, its carotene and vitamin content. About five years ago, the economics of using it for its protein content ceased because protein in other forms became readily available at approximately half the cost of protein derived from grass meal but there remained the consideration that for vitamin content it had a certain value.

Since then, synthetic vitamins in solid form have become universally available and are now a very much cheaper source of vitamin than grass meal is or can be. Prior to the war, the source of vitamins as generally provided for compound feed was cod liver oil, but it was discovered that storage tended to reduce the vitamin content made available through the incorporation of cod liver oil in animal feed. It was then that the compounders turned to grass meal because it did not deteriorate so rapidly in storage but now that the synthetic vitamin is available, grass meal is worth even less than it was worth five years ago as a source of vitamins.

People who go daft in this way lose all capacity for perspective. This is a silly political stunt to revive the waning fortunes of a few poor old Fianna Fáil dead-beats in North Mayo. We all know that. If it is necessary to spend a couple of hundred thousand pounds to keep them afloat for a while longer, I blame them for appropriating the money for such a purpose. I am afraid this will become a permanent burden on people engaged in the broiler industry or in highly competitive forms of agricultural output and that they will have to foot the bill for this folly.

You could grow grass on Nelson's hat on the top of Nelson's Pillar or on the carpet of Dáil Éireann, if you were prepared to spend enough money in the operation. You can grow grass anywhere. You could grow grass on the Minister's head or on my head, if you were prepared to undergo the inconvenience——

Mr. J. Lynch

If you could only grow hair on it.

Mr. Dillon

You could grow grass where you could not grow hair and that is just as true of the Minister as it is of myself. The point I want to make is that you could grow grass on the table here or anywhere else, if you were prepared to spend the money. But surely our whole approach should be, if we want to establish a grassmeal factory here, that the raw material of the industry should be provided in the place where it is possible to produce it?

If there is one place in Ireland where you ought not to grow grass as the raw material of a dried grass meal factory, it is on blanket bog in Glenamoy. You have the whole of County Meath and of Westmeath. You have some of the most fertile grassland in the known world on which to grow all the grass you want for conversion into grassmeal, and by heavens, the Fianna Fáil Government migrate to Glenamoy to grow grass as the raw material of a dried grass meal plant.

When we came into office in 1954 this farce was in progress. It was quite clear that it was a desirable thing to provide employment in Glenamoy in so far as it could productively be done. I had long desired to see established in this country, with its very wide acreage of bogland, what was urgently needed —a peatland research station on which we could try out how best extensive areas of blanket bog could profitably be used for any purpose. Accordingly, we wound up this piece of codology and took steps to establish one of the best peatland research stations in Europe. As we went along, we resolved the problems, which were quite formidable, of bringing power to the site, of erecting buildings on the quality of foundation that was to be found in blanket bog and of establishing a peatland research station. All that has had this quite astonishing consequence. I got a very civil invitation last week to attend the opening of the Glenamoy Peatland and Research Station by Mr. P. Smith, Minister for Agriculture, to which I was obliged to say that I thought my appearance there would be a little incongruous as I had opened it myself four years ago and twice inspected it as Minister for Agriculture. But we are about to open it again in the course of the next week and the Minister for Agriculture will open it.

I trust the Minister for Agriculture will sing its praises as they ought to be sung. Really useful research work is proceeding and this work is attracting the attention of scientists from all over the world and will, I hope, be of very material value to this country. I do not propose to enlarge on that now, but all sorts of strange and interesting things have been discovered already in the very early stages of that experimental station whereunder it would appear that certain raw materials in the form of cellulose might very well be grown on bogland and very remuneratively and also that this type of blanket bog could very easily be converted to the production of vegetables and other horticultural crops.

The one crop that nobody but a lunatic would grow in Glenamoy is grass as a raw material for a dried grass meal factory. It is not impossible that you might grow grass there on a certain rotation, provided facilities for consuming it in situ were available. Certain experiments were in progress, I believe, to see in how far grass grown there might be depastured by cattle and sheep. It is not impossible that something of value might emerge from those investigations.

I do not suppose many Deputies have bothered to read the report of the Committee on the Glenamoy Grass Meal Project. On page 12 of the report, it is pointed out:

The Min Fhéir Teoranta estimate showed £17 7 6 per acre as the annual cost of uncut grass (excluding the initial capital cost of reclamation), whereas the Department of Agriculture estimate was £28 9 8 per acre.

Which estimate is likely to be the more accurate? On page 15 of the report, paragraph 20 says:

In more recent years, Comhlucht Siuicre Eireann Teoranta interested themselves in bog reclamation. They carried out experiments on three plots of cutaway bog made available to them by Bord na Móna, and on one plot of privately owned virgin bog at Kenmare, County Kerry. It was stated in evidence that crops and grass were successfully grown in all cases. At a later stage the Company bought an area of 2,300 acres of high bog at Gowla, County Galway, with the primary purpose of producing beet. This land has been drained and cultivated, and a variety of crops, including grass, has been produced with satisfactory results. Rotation is beneficial and grass has shown itself to be a particularly suitable reclamation crop. Large areas of the bog are accordingly sown to grass, and the grass is converted into grass meal which is disposed of through the ordinary commercial channels.

That is the conclusion of paragraph 20. Has anybody any costings on the production of grass at Gowla Bog? Has anybody ever learned what the cultivation of crops on Gowla Bog has cost? Am I right in thinking that the bulk of the grass meal on Gowla Bog was incorporated in the manufacture of compound feeding stuffs by Comhlucht Siuicre Eireann, Teoranta, itself? There is nothing in this report which shows any reliable figure of the cost of producing crops on Gowla Bog. I have never been able to get these particulars.

There are certain other paragraphs in this report to which I wish to refer. Paragraph 52 on page 32 deals with the prospects of an export market:

The Six County market, however, seems to offer the only worthwhile export outlet. Occasional lots of grass meal have been exported to Britain and the Far East, but there is little prospect of developing any regular trade. The most that can be hoped for in Britain is that there may be periodic shortages, as any likelihood of a continued shortage would possibly encourage the reopening of plants there which went out of production in the last three or four years; and in regard to the Far East, the high cost of transhipment and the availability of meal at low prices from other sources, make the export of grass meal from this country to such places as Singapore impracticable. The position on the Continent is that there is a surplus of production.

Can any Deputy imagine why the grass meal plants that were in operation in England have gone out of production? If they give it sufficient thought, it may dawn upon them that the market for grass meal has collapsed in England. Will Deputies ask themselves why has it collapsed in England, and if the market for grass meal has collapsed in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, why are we starting to manufacture grass meal in Glenamoy from the poorest possible raw material we can get? I am full of hope that Deputy Haughey's incisive brain will be able to help us over this dilemma. I am sure he has read this account.

Mr. Haughey

I am not to be drawn.

Mr. Dillon

I do not blame the Deputy. I was wondering if he has read this report and applied his costing accountant's mind to the calculations that adorn these pages. On page 34 in paragraph 56, words of rather sinister import are employed:

Speaking of the scope for the greater use of grass meal, Professor Sheehy referred to the change which is taking place in the methods of producing pigs and poultry in recent years. The tendency is towards production on factory lines and standard compound rations are in demand for convenience.

If I may interpolate a comment upon that—a thoroughly unsound approach to the production of livestock in this country which should be founded on the growing of feeding stuffs by the producer.

This is tending to increase the demand for compounds for pigs and poultry.

However, the following are the significant words:

He said that it would be reasonable to include grass meal in all these compounds and that it would be justified, though not necessary, on nutritive grounds to make this compulsory.

What a very nice method of providing a market for a grass meal factory in Glenamoy: if no other means is found of disposing of the output of this industry, make it compulsory. It is just as simple as that. The paragraph goes on:

He mentioned, however, that in the case of broilers the pigments of grass meal produce yellow fleshed carcases, whereas the synthetic Vitamin A does not have this effect.

While he mentioned that, it is even more important that synthetic Vitamin A now costs about one half the price of grass meal in providing corresponding quantities of the vitamins available. I wish Deputies who have any interest in this would read this report. It is a most informative document and reaches the astonishing conclusion that we ought to produce grass meal. However, I should like Deputies to make a special note of the terms in which this conclusion is reached. Paragraph 70 is a summary of conclusions and recommendations:

Our conclusions and recommendations may be summarised as follows:

(a) Conclusions.

(i) On the basis of estimated costs of production, grass meal can be produced competitively—

that is a very informative phrase.

——in relation to current market prices, from grass grown on reclaimed bogland without a continuing subsidy after a period of 5 years from the commencement of reclamation, provided the rate of production is 2,000/2,500 a year...

When you put in all those provisos and the happy provision that nothing is to be expected until five years have elapsed, you have a pretty good bet in passing this Bill because nobody will have the slightest interest in what will happen in about seven years from today, which is the earliest date by which this report forecasts grass meal will be produced on a basis which will enable it to be sold without substantial subsidy. By that time, nobody but lunatics will be using grass meal and this whole place will fold up like the alcohol factories and everybody will have forgotten about it. Having told us earlier that there was no prospect of any export trade except what existed in Northern Ireland and that four plants had closed down in Great Britain in the previous year owing to lack of demand, they say in subparagraph (ii):

Taking account of the potential home and export trade, a market, over and above that catered for or likely to be catered for by existing grass meal producers, should be capable of development to provide an outlet for the output of a plant at Glenamoy.

Glenamoy cannot function according to that except on the basis of an output of 2,000/2,500 tons. Existing consumption of grass meal is already being catered for by the members of the Irish Crop Driers Association from grass produced in more likely centres than Glenamoy as set out in paragraph 58, which says:

Taking all evidence and views into account and having regard to the confidence shown by the commercial producers in the future of grass meal by their continuing expansion of production, we consider that it is unlikely that the home market will fall below its present level of 7,500 tons in the foreseeable future. The compounders and the other expert witnesses were all agreed that any change over from grass meal to synthetics would have to be very slow and gradual as farmers do not like to see changes in the appearance of the food they buy.

Did you ever hear such tripe in your life? Does the Minister really believe that? The paragraph continues:

Furthermore, we do not think that the threat from synthetic vitamins is as serious as was suggested by one of our witnesses. Synthetics have been available and have been used by compounders since 1954, but in the interval there has been an increase rather than a contraction in the consumption of grass meal, particularly between 1956 and 1957. In 1956, 2,100 tons of a total production of 8,100 tons were exported so that home consumption would have amounted to only 6,500 tons (assuming imports of 500 tons from the Six Counties) as compared with about 7,500 tons in 1957. The weight of the evidence given to us is that grass meal has special properties...

Debate adjourned.

The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 15th July, 1959.