Adjournment Debate: Policy Review. (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:

That the Dáil at its rising this week for the Summer recess do adjourn until Wednesday, 8th November.—(An Taoiseach.)

Sir Anthony Esmonde

When I moved the adjournment of the debate last night, I had discussed industry pretty fully and had been endeavouring to show the House that the Government had not prepared the country for the situation that was arising. I also had shown the House that from information at my disposal, and which I believe must have been available to the Government, negotiations had been going on for some time. I had drawn the attention of the House to the fact that the information given to us by the Taoiseach was tantamount to nothing. The only information we had was that if Britain joined the Common Market, we would join it, too. I had just commenced to give my views on agriculture when the debate was adjourned.

This morning, I want to put before the House some facts from a document I have here, which shows that negotiations have been going on for a considerable time. I believe the Government must have been cognisant those negotiations and I cannot understand why some definite information has not been given to this House. Further, I cannot understand why the Government did not see fit to set up a parliamentary committee, composed of members of this House and probably of the Seanad, to discuss so vital a matter, because it is a vital matter to our economy—probably the most vital this Dáil or any other Dáil has been called on to deal with since we received our freedom.

The document I have here was issued a considerable time ago. It is dated 28th June, 1961. It is an economic report on the situation in Europe, a factual report issued by the Council of Europe—ASCC, 1360— which the Taoiseach or the Minister for External Affairs can get any time they want to. It refers to a dogmatic statement by Mr. Macmillan, Mr. Selwyn Lloyd, Mr. Maudling and Mr. Heath, four important British Ministers dealing with this situation, that the three vital factors affecting the United Kingdom are the Commonwealth, agriculture and their association with their partners in the EFTA group. It goes on to say that it seems the best course for Britain, and the one for which the British Government are preparing public opinion, is to join the Common Market as a full member, provided these three conditions are dealt with and that agreement can be reached in relation to them.

This document, which was issued on 28th June—these negotiations took place some time before this House first heard officially from the Government anything about the Common Market— goes on to say: "Meanwhile, Great Britain has been actively engaged in bilateral negotiations with certain members of the Six, with its EFTA partners and with Commonwealth countries. The advantages of that procedure are evident. Mr. Heath's statement showed that on a number of specific points the talks have already enabled positions to be reconciled and have led, all along the line, to a better understanding and evaluation of the vital interests of the countries concerned."

That is clear enough. On these three vital questions, the United Kingdom has been negotiating over an extended period with regard to joining the Common Market. I stress the United Kingdom so much because the Government have based their policy entirely on what the United Kingdom is doing. When the Taoiseach replies to this debate, I assume he will tell the House he was cognisant of these negotiations and whether in actual fact Ireland has been in on them or not. Even though we are not members of the Commonwealth, we have Commonwealth preferences, and every single discussion that took place relative to agriculture was absolutely vital to us.

We come now to the question of agriculture. There seems to be greatly misinformed opinion relative to it. You have people going around saying that if we join the Common Market or if the United Kingdom joins the Common Market, we are going to lose all our trade with the United Kingdom. We buy more per capita from the United Kingdom, with the solitary exception of the Federal Republic of Germany, than any other country in Europe. Therefore, the mutual advantages that exist in trade between the two countries are there for everybody to see. If the United Kingdom joins— as she will join, quite obviously—the Economic Community, it means that we still have our trade with the United Kingdom and will still hold the greater portion of our trade. For that purpose, it is necessary to look at the situation in its wider context and see is the position quite so hopeless as so many people seem to think from the point of view of agriculture.

I mentioned last night before the adjournment that the European Economic Community has the greatest purchasing power in the world today after the United States—170,000,000 people. They are five per cent. short of their beef requirements. It is extremely unlikely that they would be able to get into full production or into any further production on that line themselves.

Further, if the United Kingdom join the Common Market they themselves will have to put up tariffs against the outside world. They will have to put up a common tariff. If we are in the market with the United Kingdom and the E.F.T.A. countries, it is reasonable to assume that the heavy imports of food into the United Kingdom will be stopped with the exception of those coming from the Commonwealth. Therefore, the purchasing power of this European organisation should, from the point of view of agricultural produce, be the greatest in the world. I do not see what this country has to fear from that.

We produce a specialised article in that we produce meat. We produce perhaps better quality beef than any country. All this talk about having to compete with the Danish market and with the only other agricultural-exporting country within the Six, Holland, and that we shall not be able to compete with them is nonsense. I do not see why this country could not be geared to go into full production for this very valuable market. However, to do so, the country requires warning.

I do not know how long the negotiations will take. I do not know how long it will be before it is a fait accompli and we are in the Common Market and the United Kingdom are in the Common Market and we have to put up a common tariff against the rest of the world. Surely the Taoiseach or the Minister for Agriculture— because it is his particular line—or the Minister for External Affairs should have given this House some information? We have had no information about these vital points nor have the Irish farmers had any information to prepare them for the challenge.

The market is there but, to succeed in it, we must have that high quality production which is so essential in the competitive market we now face. It would seem that the farmers of Ireland are not in anything like as difficult a position in the changing course of events as the industrialists. The industrialists have been let down stone cold by this Government. They are the people who should have protected them. The present Taoiseach is the architect of modern industrial policy in this country which has settled down behind high protective tariffs. Literally overnight—without any warning except the few hazy speeches at chambers of commerce functions throughout the country from Ministers to the effect that we should become more competitive—they find themselves let down.

I come now to the political question in regard to the Common Market. Many people have said there is no political issue. There is a world-wide political issue in this Common Market. The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the last American Government came to Paris for the express purpose of having conversations with the European powers. The object was to replace the existing O.E.E.C. by a world-wide organisation or an organisation embracing Europe, the United States and Canada to be known as O.E.C.D. He stated that the specific reason for that was to ensure there would be an economic bloc strong enough to face the situation with which every free nation is confronted nowadays—the encroachment of Communism. It was specifically encouraged and desired by the United States that Europe should put its affairs in order as soon as possible and form a strong economic and political cohesive unit.

Of course we have a political interest in all this. We fought long enough to adhere to our historical, cultural and religious principles. As a founddation, we have a deep spiritual and Christian outlook. Anything to do with Communism we hate and loathe and detest. Naturally, we would have an interest in seeing that our way of life is preserved and maintained. The only way in which that can be preserved and maintained is to ensure in the changing circumstances of the world that an economic force will be built up strong enough to deal with the position.

When the United States Minister came over he stressed that one of the great objects of a strong economic organisation, O.E.C.D., was to meet the attempted encroachment of the Communist menace and ideology upon the new nations forming in Africa and also that, with the growing spirit of freedom asserting itself in many of the States of Latin America which were under a dictatorial régime, there were considerable risks of their being taken over by the Communist ideology. For that reason we have a political interest. The Government must know that they are the true facts facing the world.

The Minister for External Affairs has been going to the United Nations now for several years. If he has learned anything he must know the appalling menace that hangs over the world. The Government must know, if they read the documents available to them, that these things I cite are actual facts. For that reason, our interests are widely linked up with Europe. It is not a question of economic isolation. It is not a question of our linking only with Europe but of linking with the whole free world to preserve something that is vital. Surely it would be small satisfaction to any body here if we preserved our few existing markets or gained a few new ones to know that they could be set aside by a Communist menace and that the whole world could be enslaved.

Many Deputies may think I am rather overstating the case. I can assure them in all sincerity that I am not. The risks of war seem to be receding but the economic enslavement of the world is, perhaps, the greatest menace that faces us today. With the United States, Canada and a unified Europe we shall have an economic bloc which will be able to give the aid so essential to the group of nations in Africa and to the South American States which need support to build themselves up.

It is the duty of Europe, with its ancient cultural heritage, come what may or whatever the disagreements in Europe may have been, and America, to give that culture and freedom of thought to the rest of the world. For that reason I believe the Government have failed badly in this case. They have failed badly that they did not study, evaluate and realise those facts. They have not activated public opinion in Ireland so that everybody will know what the Common Market is. Had they done that and prepared the country for this step, we should have made far greater strides in technical advancement and been prepared to meet the situation which now faces us.

I come now to the question of the Six Counties and the unification of Ireland. When a great economic unit, such as the United Kingdom—in spite of its traditional policy of dissociating itself from the European community of nations and remaining an isolated unit and an island—finds itself no longer able to carry on, in the changing circumstances of the world, is it not reasonable to assume, in relation to a small, unnatural, uneconomic unit such as the Six Counties, that out of this may come not only a united Europe but, please God, a united Ireland?

Minister for Transport and Power (Mr. Childers)

First of all, I want to deal with one or two specific observations made by Deputy Dillon in the course of the last few days. In his comment on the Taoiseach's announcement that we were applying for membership of the Common Market, Deputy Dillon once again revealed the underlying insincere attitude of the Fine Gael Party in regard to industrial development in this country. He cited as criticism of the Taoiseach's industrial policy, the policy which has been maintained by Fianna Fáil since 1932, that we now have to abandon the tariff policy which we had previously advocated. Deputy Dillon revealed the true insincerity of the Fine Gael Party whenever they, in their public statements, borrow some element of Fianna Fáil policy—and almost all their policy is borrowed Fianna Fáil policy.

Mr. Rooney

Nonsense.

Mr. McQuillan

In other words there is no difference between the two of you. Is that not what that means?

Mr. Childers

In the course of his observations he implied it never had been right to impose tariffs on industry and that that policy had proved itself wrong because we now have to contemplate dismantling the tariffs protection over a period. He gave himself away more fundamentally than that in the course of a debate on an entirely different subject—the proposal to establish a separate hotel company for C.I.E. In the course of that debate Deputy Dillon said: "I am fundamentally and irrevocably a radical, liberal free trader". Now we know where we are. That is the real truth that lurked under this half-sincere effort to follow Fianna Fáil and to adopt their policies when they become successful. We find Deputy Dillon, as the Leader of the Fine Gael Party, making the statement that he has always been a radical, liberal free trader.

For the benefit of people outside this House who perhaps may not have studied the tariff systems of the world, I want to state the truth about the matter. When we took office we did so at a time when the Cumann na nGaedheal Party, as they were then called, believed entirely in a policy relying on cattle exports and virtually nothing else. We had to take action to try to create an industrial world in this country after an appalling period of history dating back 150 years, during which many industries had been crushed and in which there was also a total absence of industrial tradition. Therefore we imposed tariffs on commodities coming in, in order to assist new industries to get on their feet. Deputy Dillon when he said he was a free trader implied that at the back of his mind there lay the doubt as to whether any of our tariffs were justified. That is exactly what we in Fianna Fáil have always experienced from the Coalition Parties, or at least from the Fine Gael Party all through their period as a Party in this House. They are never really sincere when they do adopt Fianna Fáil policy.

One would think that this was the only country in the world which had imposed tariffs to establish industry. Let us take the case of Great Britain, a country with a long established industrial tradition; a country in the van of the industrial revolution all over the world in the early part of the 19th century; a country with raw materials not available to us, and owning at one time a vast empire and, as a result, having all the opportunities for establishing industries without protection. The average tariff in the United Kingdom to-day on imported goods is 25 per cent. Yet Deputy Dillon calls himself a radical, liberal free trader. I defy the Fine Gael Party to examine the general tariff levels of any European country, and of almost any country in the world, and from that study to suggest that our level of tariffs allowing for our position and our lack of industrial tradition, indicates that we had anything but a national viewpoint and a common sense viewpoint, and that, if we had to establish industries, in the earlier stages it would be necessary to protect them from imports.

When Deputy Dillon talks about our having to eat our words in regard to tariffs, does he know nothing about what happens when one small country starts industries? He knows nothing about it. For example, if you start an industry for making paper bags an exporter from another country can in the course of three weeks send in a quantity of paper bags that would cover the entire home market at dumped prices and put the whole industry out of action for the next 12 months. Does he know nothing about dumping? If we take a tariff which is 50 per cent. on goods not of Commonwealth or British origin, say 33 per cent. of Commonwealth origin, a considerable part of that whole tariff mantle is imposed in order to prevent the dumping of goods at unnaturally low prices, prices that are far below those at which the goods are sold on the home market of the country from which they are exported. He does not appear to have studied the system of trade as it has developed over the last 30 years.

Apparently he did not even care to mention in the course of his observations as a radical, liberal free trader, that in the case of the Rome Treaty the dumping of goods after the tariffs have been dismantled can be remedied. A country can appeal to the Rome Treaty Commission when goods are being exported from another country at prices below the domestic cost in that country. If they are so exported at that price, there can be a remedy. The very free trade system of the Rome Treaty provides for the one danger that affects small countries, namely the opportunities for the export into a small country of enormous quantities of goods at low prices that would practically put the home factories out of action. Yet Deputy Dillon takes the opportunity of criticising Fianna Fáil administration for having initiated industrial development when every intelligent, young democracy had done the same thing.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

Surely a tariff is no protection against dumping?

Mr. Childers

I want to make that point very clear so that no one will have any illusions about it. The fact is that, if tariffs can be removed, it is hoped that under the Rome Treaty negotiations they will be removed at a rate which will enable us to increase our productivity and so to overcome the difficulties that would inevitably be associated with the changes which will be taking place in our economy.

Hear, hear.

Mr. Childers

——from 1951 to 1954, which showed the least degree of prejudice against the livestock trade of the country. When we took office in 1957 and formulated the Programme for Economic Expansion, having already provided a market for wheat and barley, having already expanded our sugar production from what it was in the time of Cumann na nGaedheal, and having dealt with grain crops, livestock production was the No. 1 policy, because it was our belief that the world was growing richer, that Europe was growing richer, that the British people were growing richer and, as a long-term measure, it would be vital, therefore, to increase cow stocks over a period of years, having eliminated bovine tuberculosis; and, for that purpose, we made arrangements for breeding, provided subsidies for fertilisers, and advocated the improvement of our grasslands. It is all in the Programme for Economic Expansion.

Mr. Lindsay

The Minister is not, by any chance, reading from Fine Gael policy.

Mr. Childers

Deputies may laugh, if they want to, but they cannot get around Deputy Dillon's statement that he was a Radical-Liberal Free Trader. We will probably be reminding the people of that in the general election.

Mr. O'Sullivan

Bertram Mills is only trotting after the Minister.

Mr. Childers

The price of fat cattle, two to three years old, in 1956 was £48 16s. 6d. and in the first three months of this year it was £58 6s. 6d. Yet Deputy Dillon talked as though a temporary reduction in beef cattle had some relation to the Fianna Fáil agricultural policy. He will go around blaming weather conditions and other marketing conditions on Fianna Fáil but I do not believe the farmers will pay heed to him. I do not believe any farmer with commonsense will really accept the doctrine that, this country having been virtually flooded out in 1958 and again in 1960 and having suffered the effects of the other conditions to which I referred, the Government must be blamed for the acts of Providence. I do not believe the average farmer will accept any of that nonsense.

Deputy Dillon is perfectly well aware of the fact that the farmers of this country, in their wisdom or un-wisdom, do not desire to have their cattle marketed on a 100 per cent. basis by any State or other marketing agency. They have never asked for it. Therefore, they must accept that market prices will rocket up and down, that at one moment calves may be sold for £24 and the next moment there will be a lack of demand for cattle for one reason or another. There are bound to be these fluctuations in price. The alternative to such fluctuations would be a system of marketing for which there is no demand by the farmers in general and which would involve very great difficulties in operation, causing a complete revolution in a great many marketing arrangements.

I hope I have dealt with that question sufficiently to eliminate the atmosphere of nonsense that can be created when we are discussing serious agricultural problems. The problem of promoting the Government's policy for the expansion of cattle clearly indicated in 1958 is a serious one. There are bound to be difficulties along the way. At least I can say this: the Coalition Government spent some £500,000 in their last year of office in the elimination of bovine tuberculosis. We are spending £5,000,000 this year. Ten counties have been attested and I hope that more are on the way.

The farmers will not listen to Deputy Dillon's dreary, mournful talk around the country when already they are experiencing the result of additional buyers coming in to buy good-class attested cattle in the fairs of the west and when they see the improvement in prices and in the level of demand for cattle. They will take courage from that change and will fail to agree with Deputy Dillon that Providence and Fianna Fáil are identical and that bad weather and temporarily difficult conditions can be blamed on the Government. The idea is ludicrous.

Basically there has been a very great improvement in the agricultural position since the dark days of 1956 in spite of the difficulties of bovine tuberculosis eradication. In 1960 the total cattle population was 4 per cent. above what it was in 1956 and when one considers the progress made despite the difficulty of maintaining the cattle population and of expanding it in the face of the removal of reactors, that more than anything else is proof that during those four years the farmers, whatever their major or minor criticisms of the Government might have been, had real confidence in the future of the livestock industry and real confidence that the Government was making an effort to assist them in the many ways in which they did.

There are some other evidences of a fundamental improvement in the whole of the agricultural industry. One of those has been the steady increase in the export of processed foodstuffs, in the export of agricultural produce of all kinds other than live animals. We have always worked for that in Fianna Fáil. I do not believe the Fine Gael Party have ever disputed the value of processing as much of our agricultural produce as we could in the long-term interests of the farmer and of employment alike. If we take the exports of processed foodstuffs in 1960 compared with 1956, we find the total exports of beef, fresh, chilled and frozen, have increased by 258 per cent. The exports of mutton and lamb of all types have gone up by 62.3 per cent.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

Would the Minister say when that type of exports started?

Mr. Childers

The exports of dairy produce, milk products, dried milk, butter and cheese have gone up by 184 per cent. since 1956.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

When did it start?

Mr. Childers

Exports of cheese alone, which are still fractional and which may be greatly increased as a result of various measures taken exclusively by the Fianna Fáil Government, have gone up 85 per cent. I want to make it clear that the amount is far too small but, at least, it indicates progress. Then we have the fact that, in spite of the difficulties farmers experienced before the Pigs Marketing Board was established—and I think it should have been established many years ago by one of the other Governments— the export of bacon and hams in 1960 was 267 per cent. above that in 1956, notwithstanding the Fine Gael Party's boasted advocacy of what they regard as their exclusive agricultural policy. The export of vegetables, still very minimal, went up 40 per cent. in the period. The export of fruit, still very minimal, went up 54 per cent. in the period. The export of all processed foodstuffs increased by 72 per cent.

That is really fundamental, sound progress, progress in developing a form of exports which are commonplace in Denmark, commonplace in the Netherlands and which for far too long have been delayed in this country, and it indicates real progress so far as a fundamental agricultural policy is concerned.

Mr. McQuillan

What were the increases in the export of human beings?

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

That is up also.

Mr. Childers

When we come to agricultural credit, there again, in either period of Government, further steps could have been taken at an earlier stage to make agricultural credit more easily available. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the Agricultural Credit Corporation has been overhauled by Fianna Fáil. The fact remains that as a result of negotiations that took place away back in 1957 or 1958 between the Minister for Finance and the Commercial Banks and the National Farmers' Association, the farmers borrowed from the banks about £17 million more than in the last full year of Coalition Government. I have noted efforts by some Fine Gael speakers and by Deputy Blowick to suggest that the whole of that borrowing was beginning to be an albatross round the necks of the farmers and banks alike. The facts are, as I have gathered from the banks, that the vast majority of that credit was extended to farmers to help them to get over the difficulties of eradicating bovine tuberculosis, to increase their production and to improve their land. I further learned from the commercial banks that the amount of bad debts experienced by the banks in respect of the three difficult years through which the farmers have passed is virtually negligible and that this scheme is working as well as could be expected having regard, as I have said, to the difficulties farmers have experienced as a result of bad weather.

Then, again, we have heard all this talk by Fine Gael as though they were the progenitors of all good agricultural policy and yet, late as it is, it was a Fianna Fáil Government that undertook the fundamental step of trying to provide proper marketing arrangements for our pig products and dairy products. I want to make it clear that the mere establishment of those two marketing boards is only one step on the way. No matter how efficient the boards are in the discharge of their duties, unless there can be co-operation all along the line between the boards and the farmers both in regard to production at every stage and in regard to the farmers' contribution to better marketing, they will not succeed in their efforts but at least, late as it may be, it is our Government which have carried out two fundamental changes of policy, which have long ago been evident in the smaller agricultural countries of Western Europe, in trying to rationalise the marketing of our pig and dairy products.

The present Government in this year are spending on the Department of Agriculture nearly 2½ times the money voted to the Department in the last full year of Coalition Government. I do not know whether Deputy Dillon thinks that is totally disregarding the interests of the farmers. I noticed during the course of the Estimate for the Department of Agriculture there was no suggestion that that very great increase in the Vote was either being misspent or being fraudulently spent or was not being spent with good effect.

The debate on the Estimate for the Department of Agriculture revealed no creative ideas on the part of the Fine Gael Party but at least they did not criticise us for more than doubling the moneys voted for the Department of Agriculture for direct agricultural services. At the same time we heard no criticism of the successive steps taken by the Government, at considerable cost to the taxpayer, to assist farmers over the difficult period through which they were passing, of the £2½ million made available in 1960, covering an increase in the price of milk and export subsidies for reactor cattle. Those amounts, I may add, have been enormously surpassed this year because of the low prices in Great Britain. There will be, quite evidently, a very big impost upon the current Budget in relation to the export subsidies made available for beef at the present time. The £2½ million also covered an additional subsidy of £4 a ton on potash and an additional and enhanced price for super-grade A. bacon.

It is very heartening to have seen the very considerable increase in the exports of bacon compared with 1956 and comparing the figures for the first half of 1961 with the figures for the first half of 1960, showing that some progress has been made, even although, as I have said, the machinery of the Pigs Marketing Board is not yet in operation, and before the effects of that Board can be felt in the benefits we hope will result to farmers.

We heard no criticism from Deputy Dillon when in the course of the Budget this year we added another £800,000 over and above the amount provided in the Estimates covering increases in grants for farm buildings, an increase of the subsidy for limestone and another £1 a ton subsidy for potash and the increased grants for providing up-to-date piggeries. We heard no criticism of that. I want to make it clear that the Government stand on that programme—the total programme. In the programme for economic expansion, the later measures undertaken in 1959, 1960 and 1961 plus the two Marketing Boards constitute a very considerable record of progress in the agricultural field.

One of the habits of the Coalition is to claim credit for practically all the Fianna Fáil agricultural policy and as this Dáil is now coming to an end and will not meet again in its present form, it is just as well to remind the House of some of the grants for which the Coalition claim credit whereas, in fact, these schemes were first promoted by ourselves. I refer in particular to the Farm Building Grant Scheme for which all the regulations and the proposals lay on Deputy Dillon's table in 1948 when he took office, having been devised and conceived by the Fianna Fáil Government. Deputy Dillon's sole item of agricultural policy which appears to be coherent at the present time is an increase in the scientific education made available to farmers. The number of agricultural advisers all through the Fianna Fáil Government from 1938 onwards has constantly increased and so has the money provided to the County Committees of Agriculture for that purpose. It has been increased during the last four years and it has been an integral part of Fianna Fáil policy to encourage the increase in the number of agricultural advisers but one would think, listening to Deputy Dillon, that there were no agricultural advisers now and that quite suddenly he is going to produce 100 out of the hat. That appears, from what I have read of his speeches, to be his present sole contribution to new agricultural policy.

We have been told the Land Project was the invention of the Coalition Government. What is the truth of that? It just so happens by coincidence that the present Minister for Agriculture and myself moved and seconded a resolution at a meeting of the Fianna Fáil Party in 1939 advocating grants for land reclamation and they were put into operation and a vast amount of excellent work was done under that scheme during the war years when, of course, there would have been no new agricultural machinery available, no bulldozers, no trenchers, and no diesel oil for them even if they were available. The scheme continued splendidly until after the war when it was mechanised and expanded by Deputy Dillon. That is the truth of the Land Project.

Deputy Dillon takes upon himself responsibility for cattle breeding stations, for the Soil Analysis Scheme, both of which were designed and put into operation by Fianna Fáil, and he even boasts of the Ground Limestone Scheme, as being his own particular invention. It was lying on his desk in 1948 in the form of plans for a pilot scheme in connection with one ground limestone plant in Wexford, with proposals for a subsidy for ground limestone. He left that on his desk until 1951 when, we understand, the Marshall Plan representative in Dublin suggested that he might spend some of the American money on productive schemes. As a result, the Ground Limestone Scheme was begun.

You would think from their remarks here and elsewhere that they were responsible for those policies. I mention those in particular; there are a great many more which we started—support of prices, the expansion of the sugar factories and putting them on a proper basis, to name only two others. Nearly all the schemes for agricultural expansion, in fact, we devised, and of the trade agreements with Britain, the majority were the result of our negotiation. Though we can always ask for more, the fact remains that our trade trends, devised by Fianna Fáil, have enabled agricultural exports to proceed to Britain and expand as a result.

One of the criticisms of the Coalition Parties has always been that Fianna Fáil is too tough—that it asks too much of the people, and I should like to take the opportunity of placing on record the progress made in the development of our social services during the past four years because, as always, they far outstep anything done by a Coalition Government at any stage of their history. The cost of living, as the House knows, rose during the period of the last Coalition Government, in spite of their frantic, ridiculous and contemptible promises to slash it in 1954. The Fine Gael Party will find if they look at the O.E.E.C. statistics, that the cost of living has risen by about the European average and by about the average of the countries in the sterling market. They will find there is nothing exceptional in regard to the cost of living except in 1954 when we had those blue pamphlets which promised to bring it down with a bang. Of course that never happened.

In the first place, let us take the Coalition which lasted from 1948 to 1951. The House will recall the circumstances in which we had been able to survive and in which there had been reasonable provision made for the people during the Emergency. The time came to go ahead with a new post-war policy and to consider our position in relation to the rest of the world and the progress that needed to be made. What did we have? We had an election fought for the first time purely on the basis that the people were entitled to a better living, harking back to the increases in the cost of living that had taken place during the war as though they were crushing and oppressive and proof of the disaster of the Fianna Fáil Government, although the cost of living had increased a great deal more in many other countries. Although there has never been a war yet without an increase in the cost of living, it was made the basis of what was supposed to be the turning point in our fortunes and the beginning of another great programme of industrial and agricultural revival.

The House will remember all the talk about the rich profiteers rolling round the country in their large private cars who had filled the coffers of the Fianna Fáil Party with their ill-gotten gains. The House will remember that, when Fine Gael took office with the Coalition, we had a curious mixture of Fianna Fáil policy borrowed from us and overlaid with a kind of sticky political mess. That is what was offered to the people.

When they took office, they found no profiteers. None was prosecuted. Nothing happened about the prices. They did not find any evidence that we had corruptly provided prosperity for profiteers all over the country. When they took office, they found they could not reverse the price trend which had taken place during the war. They found, as we knew they would, that that was all nonsense. Their aim was to get the Fianna Fáil Party out of office at all costs.

Then we found the poison getting under the skin of Fine Gael from the influence of the Clann na Poblachta Party. It was a strange kind of pink socialism that was not really genuine and which said this to the people: "You do not really need to make any effort. This country can be a Paradise on earth so long as we can sell out our savings in Great Britain. Everyone is entitled to a good living. This country should be a magnificent place. No one needs to make any special effort. You can all live on a tide of good fortune so long as we have enough bank notes printed." That was a desperate mixture along with the whole pattern of Fine Gael conservative policy.

All the emphasis was on the price of goods, on easy living, and the Government, in order to survive with its left wing-right wing, had to try to behave like a kindly grandmother paying out pocket money to her grandchildren and saying: "Everything will be all right in the garden so long as the paying out of the pocket money goes on."

Of course, it was easy to do that. The first Coalition Government were riding on a post-war boom. They could be absolutely certain of a number of things. First of all, exports did rise, as a result of fertilisers being available at the end of war conditions and agricultural and industrial machinery could be procured. The world was hungry for food. They could be certain that for a very considerable period prices would rise faster than the cost of production, particularly for farmers. Prices would go up and everything would be disposed of. Naturally, being a Coalition Government, they took full advantage of all these things.

I remember all the fraudulent propaganda by Deputy Dillon about the volume of production. In 1951, Deputy Dillon said that the volume of production in agriculture had shown a remarkable bound from the years 1946 and 1947. He chose two years during which the weather was perfectly frightful. It was the end of a war period, when no fertilisers were available, when no drainage machinery was available, when the arterial drainage project, devised by Fianna Fáil, could not have gone into operation and when the farmers were flooded out as a result of snow. There were also other difficulties. He might just as well have taken the year 1945. By the end of a few years of Coalition Government, the volume of production was the same. It had not increased. They said exports were increasing. People could sell their goods at high prices because prices were rising faster than the cost of government. They patted themselves on the back for all that.

Then we had the next really serious dose of poison in the community—the famous speech made by the Taoiseach, Deputy J.A. Costello, in 1949, when he announced in grandiose phrases that in order to outdo the nationalistic policy of Fianna Fáil, they were going to prove we were craven cowards utterly dependent upon British savings. They were going to repatriate the foreign assets.

It is just as well to remind ourselves of this because we have been suffering ever since from that one decision and that one speech of the then Taoiseach in 1949. Apparently, neither he nor his colleagues had taken an elementary course in economics subscribed to either by Mr. Gaitskell or Mr. Macmillan—universal economics about which there is no disagreement. If you want to repatriate foreign assets, there is only one way you can do it, that is, by importing goods. We could not bring it back in bags of gold on the train from Euston. We heard people going round the country in the Clann na Poblachta Party, feebly supported by Fine Gael, wrapping green flags round them and saying how much more splendidly Irish they were than Fianna Fáil because they would repatriate the foreign assets.

It was difficult to explain to the people that the foreign assets could be repatriated only by importing goods. We made it clear that if we imported machinery for further production and if we imported fertilisers, that would be a great way of making use of foreign assets. If they were used to import consumer goods or raw materials for industry, we would reduce our foreign reserves and would be less able to deal with any crisis that might arise if for any reason we imported a huge quantity of goods for which we could not pay with fresh exports.

We were derided around the country by the Coalition Government as un-Irish people who wanted to live on John Bull. We can all remember that nonsense. It was a childish performance. The facts are that a Coalition until their backs are to the wall, can never tell the truth to the people. They must always say the popular thing because it is easier to do it and easier to keep a Coalition Government together that way. What was the truth? The truth was that savings were being used for consumption purposes.

In 1951 we had the first Coalition crisis; £61 million worth of goods were purchased for which there were no exports in exchange. The truth was that we borrowed £40 million from the American Government and used it for inflationary purposes, the expenditure of which was boasted of by the Coalition. Deputy Dillon boasts that he spent £1 million on one day of these monies. That was spent on consumer goods. People were not saving sufficiently in 1951; they were importing too much and the Coalition apparently had not discovered the elementary truth, again subscribed to by Mr. Gaitskell and Mr. Macmillan, that when you suddenly start to throw money into circulation, when wages increase and chase prices every time you spend £1 you import 10/- worth of it and unless you have massive exports you are bound to run into serious difficulties. That is universally accepted doctrine.

In spite of the temporary prosperity attending the post-war boom, total employment was diminishing and the problems that we always had persisted even in the middle of this boom. When we had artificial aids and advantages total employment was diminishing, showing how sadly the Coalition failed to deal with the problems.

The first Coalition crisis came in 1951. By that time the Government, if it was responsible, should have been warning the people that the post-war boom was going to end and that there would be tremendous competition affecting our exports, that the whole of our costing and productivity would have to be overhauled and that it was quite impossible for any real economic revival, any real establishment of a modern economic State to have been completed in the period between 1932 and 1938, that it would take a long time to modernise a nation's economy, that absolutely no time should be lost in taking measures to provide more productive expenditure by the State and having a complete change of outlook by the people themselves as regards facing realities involving modernisation and growth of industry, the use of science in agriculture, better marketing and more productivity. In other words, there should have been some ambitious revitalising of the economy on a fundamental basis.

Fianna Fáil took over in 1951 and we administered what, looking back, was a very moderate dose of disinflation. Then we had the prolonged propaganda about the hair-shirt policy of Fianna Fáil. I remind the House of the frequent use of that term. We should recall what happened in 1956, as a result of having deceived the people into believing that the disinflation movement carried out by Fianna Fáil in 1952 was something tragic, serious and appalling and affecting the lives of all the people in a fundamental way. In 1952 there was a mild recession as a result of disinflation but in 1953 there was progress on a sound basis and for the first time the nation began to go forward again on a basis of genuine increases in production and earnings and a growth in our industrial production that had nothing to do with the post-war boom as by that time the world was becoming normal.

We had the next election in 1954. Once again the people's minds were completely turned away from realities by the Coalition. When I say "the people's minds", I mean a certain section of the people because a great many of them continued to support us and believed in the fundamentally sound policy of Fianna Fáil. We had the election in 1954, some seven years after the war ended, and it was fought in a totally unreal atmosphere in which nothing seemed to count for the Coalition except the prices of certain commodities and the increases in taxation that had taken place. Once again the Coalition dared to tell the people, when the post-war boom was over and when they had taken absolutely no steps in the way of an economic programme to revitalise the nation, that a good time was coming, and that if people voted for the Coalition, many high prices would come down with a bang.

One can imagine a country that had hundreds of years of oppression, had been bashed in the teeth, denigrated, divided and despoiled, trying to pull itself up by its own boot straps at the end of a long period of oppression, being told seven years after the war ended, that a good time was coming if they voted for the Coalition Parties. Whereas the challenge should have been issued calling for a very great change in our whole economic life, to provide the people with incentives to live here, to bring about a great change in the national attitude to production, there was nothing of that kind in 1954. I think that election was fought on the lowest plane of politics by the Coalition since the foundation of the State. In the much more grim election during the economic war period, or during the period when we had unfortunate and tragic disunity on fundamental constitutional policies, there was something much cleaner about the fight, than when we had those millions of leaflets offered as a kind of pap to the people to induce them to vote for the Coalition.

Thus the second Coalition Government were elected, again by the transfer of some tens of thousands of people. I should like to recall to the House that during that election Deputy Costello, then Taoiseach, on at least two occasions said that they must go on repatriating foreign assets. When they took office they should have watched for the possibilities of trade difficulties. Unfortunately, having blown £61 million in 1951 and having got the country into an atmosphere of spending foreign assets by the purchase of as many consumer goods as they wished, there were not enough readily available external assets left to tide the second Coalition Government over the comparatively minor trade crisis which affected no other country in northern Europe. One of the fraudulent propaganda statements made by the Coalition Government was that the crisis had something to do with the Suez crisis which took place in November, 1956, when, in fact, the balance of payments difficulties occurred in 1955 and, for a country which ended the war with an increase of £250 million in its net savings, the amount of imbalance, £55 million, was negligible. If only during those six years of Coalition Government they had not been waving this green flag around them and repatriating foreign assets to try to give the people the impression, as I said, that it was rather like bringing gold in bags from Euston to Holyhead, there would have been no crisis. So, we had a totally unnecessary crisis in the balance of payment, and the terms of trade turned against us.

Other small countries affected in one way or another by the war dealt with their inflations steadily as the post-war period proceeded. I remember being laughed at in this House when I recited on two or three occasions the mild actions taken by the Dutch Government, the Danish Government and the Swedish Government to prevent themselves from getting into the type of jam the Coalition Government got into in 1956.

The end to it all was that we had the then Taoiseach, Deputy J.A. Costello, wearily repeating around the country statements about the effects that had been made on inflation by the present Minister for Health, Deputy MacEntee, when he was Minister for Finance as far back as 1951. It was a very melancholy consolation to us who had to inherit the wreckage of the Coalition in 1956 to hear these statements made far too late, when the damage had been done, by the then Taoiseach, Deputy J.A. Costello.

I remember his recital in 1956 to the Cork Chamber of Commerce in which he wearily announced that if wages went up by £10 million in one year then, of that, £5 million represented an inevitable increase in imports and that unfortunately the exports were not there to pay for them. He pointed out that this was a disastrous thing, that it could not go on and that they had somehow to put a curb on spending. It was nice talk to hear but unfortunately it was much too late. Perhaps the Coalition Parties will no longer use with such ease the term "hair-shirt policy" because, by heavens, we had the hair-shirt policy in 1956 with a vengeance.

I wanted to go through that history and record it again in the annals of this House, now that the present Government are about to seek a dissolution. I want to admit absolutely frankly that neither I nor my colleagues believed it would take two years to get over the effects of the Coalition Government policy. We believed there would be a rebound at an earlier date. If that was an error then we accept the criticism. We believed we would get results a little bit earlier than 1959. Nevertheless, the results did finally come.

As a result of our being able to get targets for achievement, of being able to provide a firm policy for five years, of indicating the vital importance of expanding our productivity and our exports, we were able to achieve the good results that have already been fully described in this House by the Minister for Finance and by the Taoiseach. There is no need for me to go into them in detail except to point out that there is absolutely no index of production or employment or any other economic factor that does not show massive progress in 1960.

As the Taoiseach said yesterday, we are only at the beginning of the road. We have virtually wasted ten years since the war in taking the modern attitude towards the expansion of our economic life. There was very little Fianna Fáil could do but correct the position in the three years of uneasy office from 1951 to 1954 when Deputies in this House were yelling most of the time about the price of cigarettes and the price of the pint. During the whole of that period, the Coalition Government constantly failed to cite to the public the increase in the earnings of the public compared with the cost of living.

So far as the increase in the cost of living that has taken place during the last period is concerned, there has been a far greater increase in earnings and wages to meet it. That is a very satisfactory position. All we want to ensure is that whatever improvements take place in the position of workers in the community will be related to productivity, to an expansion of our export effort and to the opportunities for increased employment which come therefrom.

It is a very agreeable thing that in 1960 for the first time for a very long period we did manage to employ as many people in industries and non-agricultural occupations as had left the land in that year. It showed we were beginning to get the measure of finding some solution to the difficulties that had been experienced in checking emigration. We have a very long way to go. All we can say is that we are quite certain that emigration has been less in the past 3 years than it was in the 3 years of Coalition Government. We can point at least hopefully to signs of decreased emigration in so far as they can be gathered in the figures of population movement in the first four months of this year.

We now reach the point where we enter possibly into the new world of the Rome Treaty. If ever we need a Government that can make up their mind about things and follow a clear economic policy, a Government that can take decisions some of which are likely to be unpopular, a Government that can take courage in such action, a Government of which we can be quite sure of the path along which they will travel, it is now. I have no doubt that when the time comes the people will ask the Taoiseach, with his splendid record of having initiated a really dynamic drive in agriculture and industry, particularly in the past few years, to discharge once again those responsibilities with his colleagues and those elected by the people in this new page in our history.

Mr. McQuillan

I listened last night to the Taoiseach when he gave what I can only describe as an election address for the Fianna Fáil Party. He covered all aspects of policy that are known to have been key planks in the Fianna Fáil platform for the past 35 to 40 years, with one notable exception, the Irish language. The Taoiseach referred in detail to Partition as one of the planks of the Fianna Fáil Party. He dealt again with the hopes his Party seem to have of a solution for Partition which has been found by them. Significantly, he left out the question of the Irish language on this occasion. I have no comment to make on that except to say that it would appear that he is prepared at long last to throw overboard his former leader in so far as that aspect of Fianna Fáil policy is concerned.

In his introductory remarks the Taoiseach said he hoped that the candidates seeking election will set a fine example of democracy in action in this country. I believe the Taoiseach must have been talking with his tongue in his cheek. It is evident from his remarks last night and indeed the remarks of the Minister for Transport and Power, Deputy Childers, today, that Fianna Fáil have no intention of giving the public the facts in connection with the situation which will arise if and when we become members of the Common Market.

Whatever the views of Deputies may be in regard to that issue, at least one thing is certain and that is that the bluff that this House has real control over our political and economic destiny has been called once and for all. The spectre of the Common Market looming up on the horizon has exposed the pitiful condition of this country and our abject dependence upon Britain. It has shown us to be more dependent on Britain than countries which are actually members of the British Commonwealth. It shows that as a result of the policy pursued by the Fianna Fáil Party in particular, and indeed followed up by other groups which have had the responsibility of Government, we have become closer to Britain's economy and more dependent on her than ever before.

If the Fianna Fáil Party had been honest over the years they would have admitted that this was the situation. It was only when the Common Market became an issue that the truth came out. As the Taoiseach put it very bluntly: what Britain does we must do; if Britain joins the Common Market we must join the Common Market; if Britain stays out of the Common Market we must stay out of the Common Market. In other words, whatever decision is taken in the British House of Commons is really the decision that will bind the people of this country for their future economic and political alliance. That situation is one that has come about as a direct result of the policies pursued over the years by various Governments.

In order to focus the attention of this House, and of people outside, on the importance of our position in regard to the Common Market, Deputy Dr. Browne and myself tabled a motion some time ago in the hope that the Government would allow time for it to be discussed. It was a motion, which in my opinion, if it had been discussed on its merits would have brought to light the lack of policy over the years by the Government in making arrangements, through a wider international multilateral pattern of trade, to develop alternative markets. The motion would have exposed the failure of the Government to base our industrial development primarily on the agricultural arm. It is beyond all doubt, and beyond all contradiction, that the Governments of this country over the years have failed completely to develop an industrial arm based on the raw materials of agriculture and fishing.

Our main agricultural product over the years, as the Minister for Transport and Power has admitted, has been cattle. That, according to the Minister, was the policy of the Cumann na nGaedheal Government, as he described them, in 1932, and the Fianna Fáil Party came in in 1932 to change all that and diversify agricultural production. Instead, in 1961, it is still cattle as far as Fianna Fáil are concerned, so that they failed the same as other Governments to change the pattern of agricultural production. They failed to induce or educate the small farmer to abandon the nonsensical pattern of agriculture that has been in operation over the years, namely where the 15 acre and 40 acre farmer engages in the same type of agricultural production as the farmer with 100 to 500 acres. It is primarily the failure of our Governments to alter that pattern in agriculture so that the maximum production would be obtained from the small holding that we have the situation today, that we have no cards to play in any bargaining with Britain or Europe, and no power of bargaining when it comes to looking for the best possible terms if and when we join the Common Market.

From listening to the Minister for Transport and Power it is quite clear that the issues in the coming election will not be the future of this country as far as the Common Market is concerned, but who is the most capable man of leading Ireland into the Common Market. Of course the same propaganda will be trotted out as we had pre-war and indeed after the war. At that time a certain gentleman was the only one who was able to lead Ireland safely, to keep her free from foreign entanglements and, as far as Fianna Fáil was concerned, every campaign was based on the slogan to trust the Leader of the Fianna Fáil Party:—"Trust Dev; he will see you safely through." The slogan is changed now to: "Trust the Taoiseach; he is a wonderful leader and he will see you safely through the negotiations which will have to take place between now and our joining the European Community."

I do not think the public are going to accept that type of nonsense much longer. They are beginning to see at last that there is no use suggesting that the Taoiseach or the Leader of the Opposition will have the final say with regard to what is going to happen in this country as far as the Common Market is concerned. When it is admitted that we must depend on what Britain is going to do, it makes little difference to the public who is going to be in charge when negotiations get under way as far as our admission is concerned.

The Taoiseach's statement that we must do as Britain does should give food for thought to many people, particularly the supporters of the two major Parties. It may be yet that Britain will withdraw from the European Community because she may not be able to accept the conditions laid down by the other members. I do not say she will, but it is possible. If she does and if, as Mr. Macmillan hinted, she is forced to reconsider her expenditure in regard to N.A.T.O. and other defence pacts, where does this country stand then? It is quite possible that, if Britain is not in a position to accept the terms laid down by the other members of the European Community, she will enter into a trade agreement with Russia. What do we do then? According to the Taoiseach, we do what Britain does. Do we make a trade agreement with Russia?

This statement that we are completely dependent on Britain will come as a great shock to the supporters of the Fianna Fáil Party. For the last 40 years they have been told that this country is a republic and that we could treat Britain with contempt if necessary. Various prominent members of the Party in power spent their time running down the British market and sounding off in regard to our independence. Now, having misled the public on that for so many years, they have had to swallow their words.

I said that the bluff has been called so far as the independence of this country is concerned. We are, in fact, dependent on Britain. We had the spectacle of the Taoiseach in London recently wrapping himself up tightly in a Union Jack and telling us we are completely dependent on Britain for our economic security and well-being. The Taoiseach is leading his Party close to Mr. Macmillan. We have the major Opposition Party trying to tear that Union Jack off the Taoiseach and suggesting that he has no right to wear it, that it is they should be empowered to implement the decisions made elsewhere on behalf of this country.

The play acting between the two major Parties on the question of the Civil War and the Republic has to cease. It is quite clear now there is no fundamental difference whatever between them. There is no major issue whatever upon which they can divide and seek the support of the public to make either of them a Government. Both are right-wing Parties. If the Common Market issue never did anything else, it has done something very good in so far as it has brought an air of reality into Irish politics. In the course of this morning's debate, we had the Minister for Transport and Power stating quite clearly that the Fine Gael Party had robbed Fianna Fáil of their policy on agriculture—in other words, that the policy pursued by both Parties was identical.

The policy pursued by both Parties both on agriculture and industry has been identical. Their efforts to solve the problems of emigration and unemployment have met with the same success or lack of it. Yet, it is suggested that the country should continue to put in as a Government Tweedledum and put out Tweedledee. The Common Market has brought nearer the day when these two major Parties will have to reconcile themselves to the fact that there is room only for one and that in all decency at this stage the Civil War should be buried by a merging of these two Parties so that the people may have clarified the real issues at stake.

If an attempt is made at this election to pretend there is a real difference between the two major Parties, I believe we will have a stalemate. As a result of that, it may be necessary to have a series of elections over the next five to seven years. It would be a more honest approach for the major Parties to realise it would be in the interest of the country at this stage to sacrifice personal ambition rather than have the country bewildered over the next few years and the people in the long run having to bring about this merger themselves. I have spoken on these lines for some years past in this House. I know public opinion has not been fully prepared for the suggestion I have made, simply because sufficient people in Ireland did not realise the precarious situation in which the country had been placed over the years, a situation that has been fully disclosed now as a result of the statements made by the leaders of other countries, of the countries that control the situation, as a result of statements made by the Taoiseach in this House and, indeed, by other leading speakers. It is clear now that we are not the proud and independent nation it was suggested over the years we would be. Instead of that, we are a very minor figure in the eyes of most countries.

In the discussions that have taken place in this House, and in discussions outside it, on the Common Market the political implications of our joining have not so far been really stressed. It is only fair that the public should be given the true facts and made fully aware of the implications in certain articles of the Rome Treaty and what those articles will really mean where we are concerned if they are put into operation. I do not see much point in these articles in the Treaty unless it is the intention of the countries which constitute the Community to put them into effect.

Recently the architect-in-chief of the European Economic Community, Professor Halstein, said: "We are not in business. We are in politics." That is a most significant statement from the leading figure—a German incidentally —who occupies a very responsible position in relation to the machinery which controls the Common Market at the moment. Fundamentally the Common Market is intended to be a political organisation and the method used to create political union is the economic weapon of bringing the countries closer together on economic issues and making them more dependent upon each other in order ultimately to create a third force, politically controlled by those countries which at the moment dominate the European Economic Community. I refer in particular to Germany and France.

If the full implications of the Common Market are to be accepted, we must bow to the wishes of people like Mr. Adenaeur and General de Gaulle. I have no doubt whatever that, when it comes down to brass tacks, as far as our influence is concerned in the councils it could easily be nil; and these are the councils which will decide policy and so forth in the Common Market group. I understand that the present voting strength is very much in favour of the three major participants —Italy, France and Germany. Between them, they have 12 votes out of 17 on the Council of Ministers. It would appear that Ireland's voice will be anything but an influential one. It is admitted that we will have a say in policy: we will be allowed to talk. So far as our influence is concerned it will, in my opinion, be nil because, unless what we want is something that suits the other participants, we will have no hope of making our influence felt. If we want to develop some particular line in agricultural produce or promote a market for it, if that policy impinges on another country, we have not a hope of getting our proposals through. We have nothing to offer in the line of bargaining power. We have no alternative to offer.

Mr. Cunningham

An equal vote.

Mr. McQuillan

As I pointed out before Deputy Cunningham came in, the voting will not be on the basis of equality of vote for each participant, not under any circumstances. The Deputy is very naïve if he thinks for one moment that we will have such a say in the making of policy and the control of issues involving, perhaps, a country like Germany. I hope that the Taoiseach and the other members of the Government will enlighten Deputy Cunningham, and the other members of the Fianna Fáil Party, on a matter of such major importance as this happens to be.

Mr. Loughman

The Deputy will not enlighten us anyway.

Mr. McQuillan

The question of the future of agriculture in Ireland has been discussed in relation to our joining the Common Market, if and when we join. Here, again, the Taoiseach has failed to give a frank account to the people of what we will be led into as far as agriculture is concerned. There is not the slightest doubt that, if the Rome Treaty is implemented in so far as agriculture is concerned, the small farmer in this country will go to the wall. It is admitted that it is essential to prepare a scheme of compensation for the owners of what are described as marginal farms in the committed European countries. If it is believed in France and Germany and the Benelux countries that marginal farms will go, is it not a fact that the majority of the small holdings in this country are even lower in the agriculture scale than the marginal farms in Europe? It should be borne in mind that 75 per cent. of the holdings here are under £20 valuation.

It should also be borne in mind that in Britain the National Farmers' Union are bringing strong pressure to bear on the British Government to buy out and compensate what they describe as the small farmers in Britain who are likely to be affected if Britain joins the Common Market. The small farms that the N.F.U. have in mind are those ranging from 100 to 200 acres. If they will suffer as a result of the agricultural terms of the Common Market arrangements, what will be the position in Ireland where the majority of holdings are under 40 acres?

No attempt has been made to explain this to the small farmers but I do read occasionally where so-called experts, both in the agricultural and in the industrial field, are welcoming the admission of Ireland on the basis that our farmers will reap a benefit as a result of a wider area being available for their produce. The people who make statements like that are either deliberately trying to mislead the farming community or they do not know what they are talking about. It may be that the very large farms can survive the blast of competition but our Constitution states that it is the duty of the State to set up a maximum number of families on the land of Ireland in reasonable comfort. That means the creation of a maximum number of economic holdings. It would appear now that the population which is fast leaving the rural areas will go at a much faster rate if and when we join the Common Market.

It is beyond dispute that, particularly in the West of Ireland, over the years the small farmer was not making a living from the land alone. It is a well-known fact that in parts of the West the Government itself looked upon this question of the small farmer as a problem which should be dealt with by State measures. The trouble was that the measures taken by the Government were the ones least calculated to improve conditions on the small holdings. Instead of concentrating on improving the small holdings by changing the pattern of agriculture, the Government set up the Special Employment Schemes Office and spent money on providing employment on winter relief schemes for small farmers. If employment was not given on winter relief schemes it was given by the county council on the making of roads and by-roads and on the cleaning of drains under the Local Authorities (Works) Act.

I want to emphasise that no attempt was made to change the pattern of agriculture. The man who got three weeks' work in November, a fortnight in December and maybe a month between January and February working on a special employment scheme, a bog development scheme or a county council scheme did not do anything to his holding except perhaps put another bullock or some other beast on it. While the cattle population increased somewhat over the years—that was the only land production that was available to the small farmer in the west—the human population has gone down, because cattle production was the wrong type of production for the small holder. The tragedy of it is that if we become members of the Common Market we shall not be able to alter the pattern of agriculture which has dominated this country for so long. No provision is made for a country like this to switch over to intensive cultivation, of, say, fruit and vegetables, still greater processing of our other products. Because we have not been doing this all along, we will not be allowed to do it as members of the Common Market. It is my view we shall be confined to our traditional lines of agricultural production.

Apart altogether from the Common Market, I blame the Government over the years for their failure to keep the population on the land by diversification of agricultural production. Their lack of policy in that respect is becoming more apparent as a result of the difficulties which now loom ahead of us.

The suggestion has been made by Deputies on both sides of the House, and by people outside, that we shall be able to export agricultural produce to Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg. Could anyone name for me what items in agriculture we shall be able to export to these countries? The Taoiseach had a joke at my expense some weeks ago on the question of the impact on France and on the French farmers of the Common Market arrangements in regard to agriculture. The Taoiseach pointed out that the terms of the Treaty of Rome in relation to agriculture would not be in effect for the next five years and consequently that I was talking through my hat. It was all right for the Taoiseach to make that smart reply but the facts are otherwise.

Before the French Government signed the Treaty of Rome they had to persuade the French farmers, as this Government will try to persuade the Irish farmers, that the Common Market would be of tremendous advantage in regard to agricultural production, that Germany and other countries would be great export outlets for them. As a result the French small farmers over the past two years increased their production of wheat, dairy produce and meat—those were the three items whose output they were persuaded to increase—by about 25 per cent.

What is the result of that? All over France the French farmers rioted, put up road blocks in all the localities leading into towns and generally made their presence felt in no uncertain terms. They had an export surplus of what we are producing here and they could not dispose of it to the members of the Common Market. Where do we stand in a matter of this nature in regard to our exports? That is only part of it. In spite of what the Minister for Health, Deputy MacEntee and others used to say: "Thanks be to God the British Market is gone——

Mr. MacEntee

I never said that.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

The Minister did not disown it.

Mr. MacEntee

I made it quite clear even during the Economic War that I did not believe that.

Mr. Corry

That is the time the boys opposite were looking for £5,000,000——

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

Pipe down. The Minister for Health told the Deputy before to pipe down.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy McQuillan.

Mr. McQuillan

I did not intend in making that remark to generate any heat. I want to bring home to the House that the British market has been available to us over the years and that we enjoy certain preferences which are not at present available to members of the European Economic Community. If Britain joins the Common Market Group she will have to throw open her ports to member countries and lower her barriers to the importation of many of the products which we are selling to Britain under preferential treatment. It is not a question of 12 years' time. We enjoy the preferential treatment at the moment and that treatment can go within the next two to five years, so that not alone will we be kept out of the European markets through inefficiency and incompetent production methods but we will be squeezed out of the British market by those European countries moving in. Where is the alleged advantage that the Common Market arrangements have for Ireland? I cannot understand why any Deputy should suggest that the Common Market arrangements present an attractive proposition to the Irish farmer.

If tomorrow we had the agricultural produce to sell, if we wanted to send a shipload to Italy, France or any other country we have not got the transport facilities. Not long ago I got a letter from a friend of mine in Ghana about the condition in which Irish eggs arrive there. I discovered that Irish eggs exported to Ghana have to be transhipped at Liverpool. This is after 40 years of Fianna Fáil Government. The eggs smell like the Fianna Fáil Party after their trip.

Mr. Loughman

Or like the Deputy.

Mr. McQuillan

We have had a lot of talk about our independence over the years. When we have not the boats to carry our produce it is time the public woke up to the fact that the Government have been bluffing them all along the line. I listened to the Minister for Transport and Power telling us today that buyers were coming over here from Britain to buy our attested cattle and how glad they were that the cattle were in such good shape as a result of the money spent by Fianna Fáil on the eradication of bovine tuberculosis. Is it not a fact that we have no export arrangements whatever for our cattle, that were it not for the fact that British buyers come here to buy cattle and use British boats to transport them we would not be able to get rid of the cattle? We have no port control, no boats. We depend completely on British companies for a means of export. This is a result of the inactivity of Governments over the years, of their play-acting in this House with Party politics. It is coming home to us now.

The test of any Government is what steps they were prepared to take in developing the major aspects of agriculture. We have had the Minister for Transport and Power telling us here today that Fianna Fáil were firm believers in the cattle trade, that they were as anxious as the Opposition to ensure that the best prices possible would be paid for our cattle. Nobody disputes that. The Minister went on to say that if the price of cattle fluctuates and drops drastically the farmer cannot blame the Government for that, that that is what a free market means.

If we join the European Community, order and organisation must be brought into marketing arrangements and some system will have to be introduced into the chaotic position that has obtained here over the years. There is no sign yet from the Government that they are prepared to set up proper marketing arrangements so that the farmer would not be at the mercy of private enterprise for a market for his produce. No protected industrialist in this country is in the position that he will get 10/6d. one day and 5/- the next day for his product. He knows what he will get all the year round and for many years and he is protected. The real producer, the farmer, does not know from day to day the price he will get. The result has been that in many aspects of agriculture the farmer went out of production or reduced production. The cycle starts over again when scarcity is created. They all get back into production again and make a mess of it. There is no proper planning for production, no proper planning with regard to marketing and no stability in price.

All these faults have existed over the years and no Government took the necessary action. Action would have to be taken by the State. Then there is the clash of opinion as to whether it is right for the State to move into a sphere where private enterprise has complete control. On that issue there was agreement between the two major Parties down along the line that private enterprise was a sacred cow, that it would be wrong for the State to move in, wrong for the State to acquire rights where private individuals had control for many years. In the new Papal Encyclical the Pope has given his blessing to a move on the part of the State into fields where private enterprise has reigned supreme. At least, the old criticism that was levied at people who suggested that the State had a right to move in goes by the board.

Apart from that, I should like briefly to give a few examples of how the Government over the years have failed to secure the necessary expansion. The distilling industry has been for the last 40 years in the hands of private enterprise. I am sick saying that that industry could be one of the biggest in the country if it were taken over and run by a board like the Sugar Company and if a proper type of spirit were marketed. Both major Parties have deplored the suggestion that the State had any right to interfere with the distilling industry, on the ground that it was run by private firms and that they had rights. The community would benefit to a tremendous degree if this industry were run on proper lines. There is no case whatever for leaving it in the hands of the group that have failed to expand and to produce the proper type of whiskey and to get the markets.

The same applies to the pig and bacon industry. Here again you had lack of stability, lack of uniformity of supply, lack of confidence by the farmers. The man who acted as the processor was always safe—I refer to the bacon curer. What action did the Government take over the years? Nothing, except to deplore the fact that we had not got more exports of bacon. As a result, a board was set up, controlled by the very people who had been holding the farmers up to ransom.

The farming community have been exploited during the years and there is now only one possible way to hold the people in rural Ireland and ensure that security will be given to them. That is through the creation of State and semi-State boards on the same lines as the Sugar Company, to develop the various aspects of agricultural production. Apart altogether from the Common Market, there is a great possibility of markets for us further afield. There is great goodwill in the newly freed African States, in the Middle East and elsewhere; there is great regard for this country and there is scope for us for the export of agricultural produce to those countries.

There is no need for us to lose hope if we have a proper Government which is not afraid to face issues and stamp on vested interest. We must move with the times. I do not think that we have a lot of time left in which to reassess the position but I do feel the public should be told at this stage of the full implication of the situation that faces this country if, and when, Britain joins the Common Market. Our people should be told also that Fianna Fáil are the Party who say they believe in independence at a time when we know we are closer to and more dependent on Britain than even members of the British Common-wealth.

We realise fully that were Britain not beside us we would have no place to send our boys and girls. We also know now that it was money sent back by these boys and girls in the form of emigrants' remittances which helped over the years to keep the wolf from the doors of their fathers and mothers in the small holdings throughout the country. All these facts will be brought home, perhaps not in the next few months but in the next few years, and they will impress on the two national Parties of this country the necessity to get together and stop play-acting.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

In this debate, which takes place to mark the end of the present Dáil, I think it is realised that we are discussing not merely the end of the present Dáil but I believe also the end of a political era in this country. It is significant that the present Government, the Fianna Party, have been in office more or less for the best part of thirty years and it is proper that regard should be had to the present condition of the country in order to see what, if any, progress has been made in that period.

I do not think anyone interested in the affairs of this country could regard Ireland's present position with any degree of satisfaction. To-day this country has a population of 500,000 fewer than it had thirty years ago. Today this country is being bled of the more ambitious and vigorous of its young people in endemic emigration. Thirty years ago emigration had ceased and we therefore must regard the country to-day as being in a very depressed condition. Why is that? I think it is true to say that the reason lies largely in the fact that over the last thirty years, with Fianna Fáil generally in office, that Party was concerned to play politics and to pursue will o' the wisp ideas.

Over the last thirty years, instead of concentrating on an intelligent plan for the building up of this country, we had a concentration on polemics, on the effort of cute politicians to create carrots for the electorate. We had the Fianna Fáil Party coming into office contriving to bring about, for electoral political purposes, an economic war with Britain and I want to refer to that in some detail because I had the experience here this morning, for the best part of two hours, of listening to the unctuous remarks of the Minister for Transport and Power in which he asked us in this House to forget entirely the misdeeds of the Fianna Fáil Party and to imagine that they never took place.

The Minister for Transport and Power had the audacity to doubt whether any member of the Fianna Fáil Party had ever thanked God that the British market was gone and he went on to say: "Well if some Deputy did make a remark of that kind we all make indiscretions and it would be quite wrong to think the Fianna Fáil Party should be branded with ever holding these ideas"—the suggestion being, of course, that this person was some insignificant back bencher. Now that little dog just will not run and that kind of story just cannot be told in the coming election because that speech, in which a member of the Fianna Fáil Party thanked God the British market was gone forever, was not made by an insignificant back bencher of the Party. It was not made by Deputy Corry or any other back bencher of Fianna Fáil but by a member of the Fianna Fáil Government, the former Minister for Lands. He expressed the view of the Fianna Fáil Party in 1933 and, of course, the speech that he then made was not an individual effort as the Minister for Transport and Power would have us believe but it was repeated by the Leader of Fianna Fáil. On the 9th August, 1933——

The Taoiseach

1933? What did Gladstone say in 1880?

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

I am replying to a speech made for two hours by the Minister for Transport and Power and I intend to reply to it fully. On 9th August, 1933, the then Leader of Fianna Fáil used these words: "So far as I can see, the British market has gone forever." The Minister for Transport and Power would ask us to forget that, to tut-tut, to say: "Well, if anyone ever said a thing like that, it was a person that did not count." It was said by the Leader of Fianna Fáil. On another occasion the same person said: "The British Market would never be the same as it was in the past. To restore that market was just, as a child might say, give me the moon." That represents, not a passing indiscretion, but the belief of the Fianna Fáil Party—and now the cost must be paid—that they could indulge, for political purposes, in an economic war with Britain: that they could dispense with the British market and provide alternative markets, a phrase so frequently used by the present Taoiseach and other members of that Party at that time.

While they were making these speeches another eminent member of Fianna Fáil produced a very menacing whip somewhere near the Five Lamps outside this city and, puffed up with his own importance and with all the Fianna Fáil propaganda of that time, he proudly declared to a startled audience that Fianna Fáil had whipped John Bull. There is the background of the difficulties that this country may now have to face. In the 30 years that the Minister for Transport and Power dealt with this morning we had this Party starting off in office by attempting to tear down the market which they now say we must follow no matter where it goes. Coincidental with that aim there was the effort made to start in this country, irrespective of the background, the reason, the quality of standard, a whole series of small industries and the indiscriminate tariff policy was launched.

If anyone had an idea, all he had to do was to ask for a tariff. There was no necessity to have the raw materials here, no regard to the consequential effect on the rest of the country. If you had an idea you got a tariff and you were to start your industry. People were encouraged to invest their capital and their livelihood, everything they could reach on to build up industries here indiscriminately. It did not matter about anything else; if you wanted to start an industry you were told: "There is a tariff; put your money into this and we will protect you." That was not a temporary move. No warning was given that at some stage these industrialists would be let down with a bang. They were told: "If you support us, the Fianna Fáil Party, and plough your money into industry, we shall protect you and we are going to maintain these tariffs to ensure that you will get a return for your money."

Mr. O'Malley

The same as every other country in Europe.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

I shall deal with Deputy O'Malley if he continues to interrupt. I want to put this in perspective because those 30 years have been costly years. I began by saying we had come to the end of an era and we have. As a result of the decision which the Government have been obliged to make we are now applying for membership of the Common Market and it is true to say that we do not know what is in store for us but we are going into that market whistling to keep up our courage, to allay the fears, the gnawing gripe and anxiety that must exist in many persons' breasts at the moment, people who believed in the industrial drive of Fianna Fáil in the last 30 years.

Apparently, those people will be thrown to the winds; it does not matter that they believed in Fianna Fáil's industrial policy since 1932. What does it matter? The sun has gone in now, the dark clouds are there and the industrialists have to put up with it. So be it, but the country must continue and we must have regard to the fact that, due to the stupid, ill-conceived policy of the Fianna Fáil Party for the past 30 years, due to the fact that they produced this will-o'-the-wisp idea that we could establish here an industrial paradise, because they were concerned with doing that, they did not look at the ground on which they were standing. Faraway hills are green and that is what they were thinking about. They allowed the agricultural industry, the primary industry, to decline, to suffer, to wilt and to fade and today, on the threshold of the Common Market, the one asset that could have been valuable to us is far less of an asset than it should be.

There is the cost that this country has to pay. We may have to pay very dearly for the fact that a Fianna Fáil Government has been in office for most of these 30 years. If the wise industrial policy of the Cumann na nGaedheal Government had been continued, if we had built up in a discriminate way our industries, built up industries that had available here native raw materials, built up industries that had a tradition and knowledge behind them—if we had done that, and concentrated on doing it and if, at the same time, we had pursued the policy of the late Paddy Hogan as Minister for Agriculture, concentrating on building up our agricultural industry, we could have looked at this Common Market with equanimity and we could have snapped our fingers at any competitors we might have to meet.

Of course, we did not do it. Paddy Hogan was sneered at as the "Minister for Grass". The idea of the industrial policy of the Cumann na nGaedheal Government was just scoffed at—it did not matter. These astute politicians just went along with their game to cod the people, hoping that the day would never come when they would be found out. They are found out now. This challenge the Taoiseach talked about last night—let us agree it is a challenge and let us face it as a challenge—is also the call out bid as far as Fianna Fáil are concerned. Their bluff has been called and they are not in a position to meet the future.

Now and in the immediate future we have got to develop, as a matter of urgency, a dynamic policy for agriculture. If we do not do that—and there is no doubt about this—this country will be completely depopulated. Our small family farms will disappear and we will become a ranch ground for a few individuals raising cattle for continental purposes. We have to meet that challenge as a matter of urgency. The Fianna Fáil Party do not know how to do it because they never have believed in agriculture and never have had an agricultural policy. The Taoiseach and the other members of the Fianna Fáil Party will find very quickly in the coming weeks and months that the good sense of the people will lead to a decision that will mean that in this matter of the Common Market and of the sale of our agricultural exports, the person who should lead the Government is the person whose name means so much to the Irish farmer, and that is Deputy Dillon, the Leader of the Opposition.

I have mentioned these matters because we had this unctuous speech from the Minister for Transport and Power this morning, in which he proceeded to disregard all the Fianna Fáil mistakes of the past. He proceeded to suggest that the Fianna Fáil emphasis always has been on building up the agricultural industry, According to him, the slaughter of calves never happened. According to him, the Economic War was just a nightmare — it really did not occur. He even suggested in his speech that he, the Minister for Transport and Power, was father of the Land Project. He said that in 1939 he proposed a motion to that effect at a meeting of the Fianna Fáil Party. I never listened to such arrant nonsense. Deputy Childers the father of the Land Project! If the Fianna Fáil Party propose to play that sort of game in the coming election, they will find they have made a very grave mistake.

The Land Project, which came after 16 years of neglect of agriculture, was the first concrete step made towards building up a vigorous agricultural industry here. To-day that Land Project is in cold storage. A very vital part of it, Section B, has been abandoned—again symptomatic of the fact that the Fianna Fáil Party are not concerned and never have been concerned for the small farmers of this country. If we are to meet this challenge of the Common Market, the sooner a Government that has an agricultural policy is sent into office, the better for the country. I believe that that will be done in the coming election.

I could spend a lot of time in replying to different things the Minister for Transport and Power said in this debate. I do not propose to do so, but I want to say a few other things. The Taoiseach gave us an address last night which was carefully prepared and read out by him. It was full of fine sentiments and grand ideas, but basically implied all through it was: "For God's sake, let us forget the past. Let us imagine we are only starting now." He would ask us to play this game according to the rules he has contrived for it, and that a new Ireland is to face the challenge of the Common Market without in any way taking any wisdom from the experiences of the past. Again, I should like to assure the Taoiseach that that effort will not succeed. The present Government came into office four and a half years ago on a specific programme and with a definite policy.

Debate adjourned.

Dáil Éireann debate - Thursday, 3 Aug 1961

Adjournment Debate: Policy Review. (Resumed).

Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 3 Aug 1961