I move:
That in view of the serious position of the dairy and cattle industries, Dáil Éireann is of opinion that the whole question of prices and marketing should be reviewed.
I do not want to give the impression that either Deputy Finucane or myself knows more about the marketing of agricultural produce than the Minister, his officials or many important men engaged in the industry. I have no hesitation in conveying to the Minister and to the House our disappointment with the progress in market development and research. Our system of marketing agricultural produce is obsolete. It is the same today as it was 50 years ago.
We are still exporting the bulk of our cattle on the hoof. Irish farmers suffer and have suffered the whims and fancies of the English farmer. At the slightest notification of foot and mouth disease in Britain, the Irish farmer suffers because the markets are held up. That happened 50 years ago and it is still happening. The least upset in the British market has an unfavourable reaction on our farmers. It is high time some practical steps were taken by our Government to ensure that more of our cattle are processed for export. That refers particularly to the British market, which is considerable.
This question must be reviewed. We should have abattoirs to enable us to slaughter more cattle. That would give tremendous employment. In slaughtering more of our cattle, we would have raw materials for the development of several industries. The same applies to the slaughter of our sheep. The development of a leather factory using cattle hides and of a major industry based on wool would provide more employment. We hear great talk about our lack of raw materials and we search the world for industrialists willing to come here and set up industries. We look to the four corners of the world for raw materials with which new industries can be set up, but we seem to ignore altogether the very plain fact that we have the greatest of raw material on our own farms. If we could draw public attention to this raw material and have the necessary finances, backed by the Government, we could produce numerous commodities from the slaughter of our livestock at home, and allied with that, should be the transport of carcase meat to export markets.
We need more and better refrigerator ships to transport our meat to the various ports in England. There are 10,000,000 people in the city of London and they alone could consume more than we could send them. There are also big populations in Liverpool, Birmingham and Glasgow but we need the necessary ships to transport our finished products to all those markets. We need a proper marketing organisation and suitable depots at those ports for the distribution of our finished products and, when we get them, we should ensure that only the best is sent to them. The customers there are anxious to secure our Irish products because they know they can get them fresh and clean. Cattle and sheep killed in Dublin or Cork today could be sold fresh in any English market tomorrow, but we have not availed ourselves of the tremendous geographical advantage which we enjoy, and it is high time the Government did something practical and realised the importance of our own raw materials worked to the best advantage.
Some years ago, I welcomed the announcement made by the Minister for Agriculture that he was allocating a sum of £250,000 for market research for agricultural produce, but I am sorry to say that the progress made since then has been shockingly slow and disappointing. There is an old saying that big bodies move slowly, but this business is moving too slowly for my taste and that of the people who are suffering from lack of guidance in this respect. The farmer himself is not to blame for this deficiency. He is a producer and is not in a position to explore and develop markets in foreign countries. That is a matter altogether outside his capacity. It is a matter that should be tackled by a combined effort on the part of all the interested parties such as those engaged in the processing and canning of meat, with the support of the Government behind them. It will cost money, but, in my opinion, it would be money very well spent because it would provide a considerable amount of employment on the land. I sincerely hope that some practical step will be taken in the immediate future and that lack of money will not be responsible for delaying action any longer.
We read in the newspapers of the vast amount of money being spent on other projects such as the development of jet aircraft services and the Verolme Dockyard at Haulbowline. It is good to see development of that nature but I often wonder if the money is being spent to the best advantage of the Irish people. I feel that if more money were channelled into market development, with particular emphasis on our next door neighbour, England, it would be of far greater benefit to the Irish people as a whole than money spent in any other way.
Having dealt so much with cattle and sheep exports and the industries which could develop from the slaughter of livestock at home, I shall now turn to the dairying industry because that industry is the parent of the cattle industry and is the foundation of the country's whole economy. The production of milk is a very important industry, giving a tremendous amount of employment. Recently, the Minister said that a slight increase in that production was causing a headache but I hope to see production increased still more. Even though it may cause a headache, I believe that headache can be cured, and cured very effectively if our milk production is channelled into the right lines for the export market.
Studying statistics today, I was amazed to note that we are importing £64,000 worth of dairy products, cheese, etc., and I should like to get an explanation of why we are importing cheese and other dairy products in 1960 into a land which is exporting its own dairy products to other countries. I cannot see the sense in that. It may be an infinitesimal amount in the eyes of the Minister, but to me, £64,000 appears to be a big sum to leave this country for dairy products from the first of January to the end of August, at a time when we are supposed to have a surplus of milk.
When I came first into Dáil Éireann, some four years ago, I stressed the importance of developing our cheese industry. A gallon of milk makes a pound of cheese but it takes two and a half gallons of milk to make a pound of butter.