Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 17 Jul 1962

Vol. 196 No. 14

Committee on Finance. - Vote 43—Agriculture (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following Motion:—

"That the Estimate be referred back for reconsideration."—(Deputy Dillon).

Mr. Dillon

Before turning to the general subject matter of this Estimate, with which I was dealing when the House adjourned on Thursday last, I want to interpolate a comment on an incident arising during Question Time to-day. Deputy Esmonde raised the question of the terms of the Agreement under which sugar was being exported to the United States of America. The Minister for Agriculture replied that the terms of that Agreement are available for perusal to anyone who wants to get full details in the Library. I asked the Minister, by way of supplementary question, whether it was not so that the Agreement to which he referred as being available in the Library referred to last year and could he give us the particulars of the new Agreement under which it is proposed that the United States of America should purchase 10,000 tons of sugar. I pointed out to him that the American newspapers were full of a story that a rider had been attached to a Bill as an emergency measure, called the Honey Bee Bill, in the American Congress, one of the results of which was to provide a quota of 10,000 tons for Ireland in the overall import quota of the United States of America for sugar, and I was told the Minister for Agriculture knew nothing about it. If he does not, it seems to me to be one of the most extraordinary things this House has ever heard because if the Minister for Agriculture of this country is to learn of the availability of a market for Irish beet sugar through discussions in the Congress of the United States and the comments thereon by American newspaper men, Dáil Éireann would appear to be in a very bad way.

It is certainly a source of embarrassment to me to learn of these developments for the first time from the American newspapers and to discover that our Minister knows nothing about them and seems to care less. I hope that before this debate concludes, he will be in a position to give us some information of the terms on which we have secured a quota of 10,000 tons of sugar of the American import programme and what, if any, corresponding obligations devolve on us. Last year, we undertook to import 50,000 tons, I think, of coarse grain in excess of our average importations of the previous three years. Whether any such obligation obtains in connection with the new arrangement, nobody seems to know and Dáil Éireann ought to be informed by the Minister for Agriculture as soon as may be.

I want to draw the attention of the House to a fact which is only too manifest to those of us who live in rural Ireland but of which the Government's spokesman, the Minister for Agriculture, appears to know nothing, that is the steadily declining standard of living that is being thrust upon the farmers, with special reference to the farmers who run their own holdings, the men with 50 acres and less. Usually, when we talk of the cost of living, we associate it with employed persons and its impact upon them. What a great many Deputies and a great many members of the Government seem to forget is that 90 per cent. of the small farmers are in exactly similar circumstances to employed labourers, except that instead of working for wages, they are working for themselves. They are self-employed because we deliberately set out to make them so. There was a time when they were not, when they were all rent paying tenants but we abolished that system and we made them owners of land working for themselves. This has had certain consequences, as a result of the activities of Fianna Fáil to which I want to direct the attention of the House, in a way which I do not think Deputies advert to at all.

In Table 10 of Economic Statistics to which I have already referred, the profits from agriculture, forestry and fishing are set out for each year. In 1957 these profits were £108.6 million. In 1958 they had fallen to £97.4 million. In 1959 they had risen to £106.5 million. In 1960 they had come back to the figure of 1957, £108 million. This year the Minister boasts that they have increased by a further £8 million but he has quite overlooked the fact that over the period to which these figures refer there has been a drop of 17 per cent. in the value of money. The cost of living has gone up 17 per cent.

That rise in the cost of living impinges just as directly on every small farmer in Monaghan, Cavan, Donegal, Leitrim, Mayo, Galway, Sligo, Clare, Limerick, Kerry, Cork— and many other counties in Ireland where one does not think of there being small farmers at all, like Meath and Laois-Offaly, where we ordinarily think that all the farmers are big farmers but where there are a great many small farmers too—as it does upon a man working for wages or a salary.

This means that the £ in 1961 is worth the equivalent of about 16/2 in 1957. That means that the profits of the agricultural industry in 1957 were £108 million. According to the estimate in Table 10 of Economic Statistics issued prior to the Budget 1962, the profits accruing to the farmers of the country at large are now £116 million but in fact that means the equivalent of £96.3 million as compared with £108 million in 1957. It is astonishing to me that nobody adverts to that fact.

I suggest to the House that in terms of real money the farmers today are receiving approximately £15 million less for their labour than they were getting five years ago. That is the reason why the Minister for Lands is making plans to take over the derelict farms in Mayo, Monaghan, Cavan and the other counties where the bulk of the land is in the hands of the small property-owning farmers. It is because the Government have forgotten this category of people, it is because the Government have not realised that the wage earning classes and the salaried classes got the seventh round and the eighth round of wage increases to compensate them for the rising cost of living and that these people got nothing, that a very large percentage of these people are giving up the fight, selling their land and going to England in search of work.

I want to direct the attention of the House urgently to the fact that that disastrous development, that effective reduction in the income of the small farmers, will not only leave considerable areas of the land derelict but will react on the towns and villages as well. The business people in the small towns and villages in Ireland are discovering the growing flood of emigration of their customers is circumscribing and reducing their business with consequential reduction in employment and a further contribution to the tide of emigration to the United Kingdom where the industrial machine is still prepared to absorb a very considerable number of our people. But the element of the population which is going is the element of which this country stands in most urgent need, and that element is the boys and girls between the ages of 18 and 25. They are not only the most dynamic and precious element of the community but, from the purely economic viewpoint, they are the consumers, and anyone who has any experience of business in rural Ireland realises that their disappearance is playing havoc with the small towns and villages of this country, to the great detriment of the whole social structure of rural Ireland.

What horrifies me is the conviction that the Government themselves either do not know or do not care about what is happening to this element of our society. I think that the most important, valuable and permanent feature not only in the economic but in the social life of this country is facing prospective destruction and that this is a great disaster for Ireland. I believe we could take effective measures forthwith to reverse this process and I am hopeful that an effective Government could do so. I am hopeful that we can get this Government out so that another Government can do what requires to be done.

What does require to be done? What requires to be done is to expand the output of the land of Ireland and to provide our people with the means effectively to market an enormously increased output from the land. From that point of view, I want to direct attention to an extract from the Report of the Food and Agriculture Organisation on agricultural commodities with projections for the year 1970, in which it says:

While surpluses may increase, says an FAO report on Agricultural Commodities—Projections for 1970, malnutrition will remain widespread in many low-income countries during the '60s. The report says that per caput intake of animal proteins may not exceed 10 grams per day in the Far East in 1970 against present levels of 40 grams in the European Economic Community and 65 grams in North America.

I should like to add that it is manifest to everybody that one of the problems existing in Africa is not hunger because, in fact, in most parts of Africa there is an abundance of food, but an acute protein shortage which has resulted in widespread deficiency diseases. That is of peculiar interest to us because if there is any country in the world fitted for the wholesale production of animal protein it is our own country.

Therefore, we have every reason to believe that given effective marketing techniques there is an enormous potential market for animal protein and I do not believe that with the emergence of the European Economic Community and its ultimate association with the United States and other freedom loving nations of the world like Canada, Australia and New Zealand, this new association will stand idly by and let the peoples of Africa and Asia fall into the Communist grasp as a result of unrelieved poverty and distress. That means that the resources of the EEC plus those of the Americas, will sooner or later be effectively deployed to bring within the reach of these peoples in Africa the animal protein they so need and which, according to the FAO Report, will continue to be needed for many years ahead.

Our country should face that future with courageous conviction that, given reasonable means to produce, we could make a great contribution to fulfilling that need. To bring about that contribution what must we do? The principal source of protein production here should be in the form of meat and meat products. We are adequately equipped to provide meat products through the immense potentialities of our grass land. One of the most alarming features of the situation at present obtaining here is that there has been an actual decline in the number of cattle on the land. There were 112,000 fewer cattle in this country at the last enumeration than at the previous enumeration. I believe that can be remedied. This decline in our cattle population may be the result of the efforts at eradication of bovine tuberculosis. However, it is necessary to realise—and it was so stated to be in the original document published over the name of Mr. Whittaker, the Secretary of the Department of Finance—that in the economic expansion envisaged for this country, nothing is more important than that the cattle population should be expanded.

That can be done, and it can be done largely on the basis of grass. There was a time when Fianna Fáil took the attitude that grass production was something ignoble. They have now come round to the conclusion that it is one of the most important features of our economy. Yet hundreds of thousands—in fact, perhaps millions—of our acres of grass are as bad as they can be. The reason is perfectly clear—the absence of an adequate agricultural advisory service. It has been suggested you cannot provide these agricultural advisory services any faster than the people demand them. I want to suggest that is a completely illusory approach.

The duty of an effective Minister for Agriculture is to provide such advisory services so that they will be available to the people when the people are prepared to take them. It is an odd thing to find that the very farmers who most urgently stand in need of advice are very often the farmers who are most reluctant to accept them, in the same way as it is true that the industrialists who most need advice to bring themselves into line with their requirements to meet the E.E.C. challenge are very often the very ones who will not do anything about it and whom it is most difficult to persuade to learn in order to face the new competition inherent in the Common Market.

I believe that we should provide without delay the advisory services in agriculture without which effective progress is impossible. I should like to see it extended to the point where we have a trained agricultural adviser in every rural parish in Ireland, of which there are 800. That may not be possible at the beginning but it should be our ultimate objective. Even if we begin with one trained adviser to every three parishes, we would be making an immense advance towards achieving what is so badly needed.

I do not believe there is any use in offering advice to people unless it is financially possible for the people in question to accept it, and act upon it. It is for that reason that we in the Fine Gael Party advocated all over the country during the past general election that, having supplied an effective agricultural advisory service, we believed the Government should make available to the small farmers credit, interest-free, of up to £1,000 for any scheme of increased production on which they were prepared to embark under the direction of, and in consultation with, the national agricultural advisory services.

I believe that could be done. If it were done it would confer immense benefits not only on the farmers concerned but on the country as a whole. In view of the fact that the Minister says he never subscribed to the view that the land rehabilitation project was not a valuable national service, I hope he will realise the measure of his own mistake in wiping out the credit facilities which were made available under Part B of that scheme. When it was suspended, a very large number of farmers who urgently required facilities under the land rehabilitation project were denied them because the credit facilities which used to be available were no longer available. If he does not restore it, some day we will.

I believe it is an essential part of developing the agricultural industry, over and above the actual advisory and credit facilities which we have suggested, that we should put an end to the inadequate housing that obtains on so many small holdings. We have recognised our obligation in that regard in the towns and cities, but there are hundreds, if not thousands, of small holdings where people are living in wholly inadequate housing conditions. We take the view that steps should be taken forthwith to improve those conditions by making it possible for the small farmer through the Land Commission to get himself a new house and, having availed of the grants available from the Department of Local Government and the local authority, have the balance of the cost charged on his annuity to be paid off over the surviving period of the land annuity attached to his land.

That scheme has the advantage of making it possible to ensure that in the building of these houses there would be adequate technical, engineering or architectural advice available to ensure that they are properly built, and, secondly, it has the advantage that the house is there as part of the holding and in the event of any subsequent transfer from the present occupier of such a title there will be no hardship on his successor to continue the payment of the annuity because in addition to the land he buys he will get a new house.

I want to direct the attention of the House to a suggestion I made already that the milk industry, which can be described as the foundation of the livestock industry, requires to be reorganised on its supply, processing and marketing sides. I held the view for many years, and I do not deny it, that we should preserve at any cost the small individual co-operative unit in rural Ireland. It has great sociological advantages that the local creamery should be intimately associated with the local group of suppliers. I think there is a great sociological advantage in that arrangement but I believe world competition has now become so acute that we cannot afford to surrender the efficient rationalisation of the industry to the sociological advantage of intimate contact between the individual co-operative unit and the actual supplier.

Therefore, I think the whole creamery industry calls for review so that we might amalgamate a great many of the small inefficient units into large groups which would have at their disposal the maximum efficiency which maximum capitalisation and modern equipment would make possible. If we were to do that we would discover, as has been discovered in some of the larger groupings which have already taken place, that the increased efficiency of the processing would make available up to 2d per gallon in the cost of handling the milk, which might very advantageously be used to pay the producer a premium on top grade milk.

The plain fact is that the quality of the milk reaching many creameries is such that it is fit only for conversion into butter. There are many other processes to which it is not susceptible owing to defects in quality. I do not propose to weary the House with any attempt to describe the technical facets of this whole question of quality. It is sufficient to say that I believe we could get an immense improvement in the quality of milk if a premium were payable for high grade milk, and if the creamery industry had access to a growing volume of top grade milk, it would make available to an efficient creamery industry a larger and wider diversification of its end products than is available to many small creameries at present operating.

I believe, furthermore, that in addition to the increased efficiency that could be brought about by these groupings of creameries, we could at the same time, without any additional capital expenditure, handle and process a far greater volume of milk than is at present being handled. That far greater volume of milk could be produced from the same land as is at present producing it if the grass husbandry practised on the land were brought to the standards of husbandry possible in this country if proper methods are used.

One of the strange and interesting things is that so far as I know our methods of growing cereal and root crops are as good and as up-to-date as those operated in any other country in the world. It is only in respect of grass husbandry that we have fallen so disastrously behind, and the tragedy is that there is no branch of agricultural husbandry for which this country is better suited than grass production. One of the elements in our society which must bear the responsibility for that is the Fianna Fáil Party which, over the years, sought to establish that grass was the hallmark of bad farming. They have woken too late to the discovery that good grass is the hallmark of really good farming, but in the meantime considerable psychological damage has been done and it will take some time to correct this illusion of Fianna Fáil.

Therefore, if we got increased the quantities of milk and could process it with no serious increase in our overheads we might produce an added margin of profit which would be a further inducement to our farmers to improve the quality of their milk or to improve the method of marketing at present employed. I remember on one occasion being told by one of the most experienced creamery managers in this country that in the area served by his creamery an agricultural parish agent, appointed by the Department of Agriculture, was appointed. The area he served approximated to about one-third of the creamery area in which this manager worked. He said that in two years he saw an increase in the milk supply from that area where the parish agent was at work which, if it extended to the whole of the creamery area, would have meant an increase of 1,250,000 gallons of milk coming into that creamery and that, had that increase been effective, it would have been possible for him to pay from 1d. to 1¼d. more to the farmers because he would have been able to process that extra milk without any substantial addition to his capital costs.

It is, then, in increased volume, in increased efficiency and in a diversification of end product, with effective marketing procedures, that there is unlimited scope, in my opinion, for increased milk production in this country and a corresponding increase of the agricultural income of the people. But I do not want the House to lose sight of the fact that the Food and Agricultural Organisation prophesy that for the next ten years animal protein will be the principal deficiency in the dietary of the undeveloped nations and that one of the most desirable forms of animal protein for transfer to these areas from the temperate climates such as we inhabit is dried milk.

I believe there is an almost unlimited market for that product, once efficient marketing procedures to distribute it are established. Our land and our people have an almost unlimited capacity to fill that requirement. At the same time, we shall have, as a by-product of the dairying industry or we can regard the dairying industry as a by-product of the cattle industry—whichever is the by-product and whichever is the main stem, there will result, with an increased output of milk, an increase in our cattle population.

So far as I can see, the prospects of the markets for live cattle and meat and meat products in the EEC— which will consist, in my confident belief, not of six but of ten after Great Britain and Ireland, Denmark and Norway join—are bright. We shall have and continue to enjoy for veterinary reasons associated with our insular situation a preferential status on the British market where British farmers will continue to want our cattle in order to maintain their programmes of beef production. Over and above that, we shall have access to the whole area of the ten, with the prospect of having the joint resources of the ten employed and opening up demands for animal protein in Africa and the Far East, to all of which our meat products can make a very material contribution.

Therefore, we have no rational reason to apprehend the absence of markets, given our concentration on the expansion of supplies of animal protein in this country. Animal protein consists of many things — meat, milk, cattle, sheep, mutton and lamb. Nobody on the Continent of Europe eats mutton or lamb at the present time. It is quite an unusual dish. I do not suggest to the House that you can change the eating customs of a population like the French, the Germans or the Dutch overnight or indeed over quite a long period.

However, nobody in this country has any notion of what it could mean to this country if Europe began eating lamb. There would be opened for us a vast additional market which it would test the resources of the existing supplies available to supply. I believe, in the long term, that is one of the great benefits that will accrue to us under the new Common Market dispensation but it is not one on which I wish to dwell now.

I want to refer to the problem of bacon. I know that when I was in the Department of Agriculture they adverted to this but I often wonder now whether they advert to these things at all. It appears to me now that all useful activity in the Department of Agriculture is being shed to boards outside the Department of Agriculture until the point is reached where the Minister for Agriculture feels entitled to come in here, shrug his shoulders and say: "I have no responsibility; it is a matter for Bord Bainne, the Pigs and Bacon Commission" or some other board which he has set up.

I cannot see that the Minister for Agriculture ever has the right to come into this House and disclaim responsibility for the development of the agricultural industry of which pigs and bacon constitute so vital a part. I want to put this point to the House. Why is it that Danish bacon today is making 40/- a cwt. more on the British market than Irish bacon? That represents approximately £2 a pig.

I want to suggest to the House that the Danish farmer, as a result of superior strains of pigs, is getting, on the average, a conversion rate of 1 lb. of meat to 2.8 lbs. of feeding stuff while we are getting a conversion rate of only 1 lb. of meat to 3.2 lbs. of feeding stuff. If that reckoning is correct, then the Danish farmer is getting £1 per pig more out of every pig he produces as a result of its superior capacity to convert feeding stuffs into meat than we are. I should like the Minister to be able to tell me —he ought to know—whether or not it is true that the Danish factories are able to get, between bacon and offals and by-products, £1 a pig more out of every pig slaughtered than we are able to get in the factories in Ireland? If these propositions are true, and I believe they are true, the Dane is getting £4 per pig more than our farmers get.

Now, part of that extra amount which the Dane gets he takes in further award and part is devoted to putting him in a more competitive position on the market where he operates. These advantages are accessible to us. He gets 40/- a cwt. more for his bacon on the British market partly as a result of the superior uniformity of his product but mainly as a result of his superiority in marketing his product.

The Dane considers his extra and foreign market to be his first charge on his industry as a whole. Therefore, he is able to guarantee a constant supply of uniform product to the British market which he wants to serve. He is able to say to the wholesaler in Great Britain that if he will contract with his central marketing organisation to take 90 per cent. of his supplies from Denmark, they are prepared to give him very special concessions by way of guaranteeing that if the price goes up in any week, he will not have to pay the increase in price, whereas, if the price goes down in any week and if he has bought bacon, they will refund to him any reduction that may be made in the course of that week.

I believe if we had supplies, we could operate a similar marketing system. Our trouble is that we cannot do it over the whole of England because we have not adequate supplies, but if we took a restricted area around Liverpool or Birmingham or any other centre of population of our own choosing and really organised marketing in that area effectively so that we could guarantee every week of the year a constant supply and if, in those areas, we were able to offer terms as advantageous as the Central Marketing Organisation of Denmark offers over the whole of England, at least we should get a footing. I believe, having done that, we could gradually expand to meet Danish competition in marketing all over England.

I believe that the conversion rate of feeding stuffs into meat is a matter of progeny testing. I set up a progeny testing station in Cork in 1958 which was opened by the present Minister for Agriculture just after I had left office and we have been talking ever since 1957 about opening a second.

Now I am told that the second station is about to be opened at Thorndale here in Dublin. But that was five years ago——

Mr. Moher

And 50 years after the Danes started it.

Mr. Dillon

Yes, and I suppose if Fianna Fáil had remained in office, it would have taken us another 50 years. Res ipsa loquitur. I opened the first progeny-testing station. I built it from the foundation up at Cork, as the Deputy knows, and within a week or a fortnight of the present Minister coming into office, he opened it. He had the civility to invite me to attend the ceremony but I felt that such ceremonies should be unattended by ghosts and I did not go. I allowed him to open it; but it was there to open. If I became Minister in the morning—which I should much sooner do than become Taoiseach—I do not know whether the present Minister will leave any station for me to open. I hear rumours. I evacuated Thorndale five years ago and moved out to Abbotstown. I thought they were going to sell Thorndale and indeed they might well have done so but that is another matter. I am told now there is to be a pig progeny testing station there in the middle of Drumcondra of all places. That seems to be an odd place to put a pig progeny testing station but there may be reasons for it. I think it would be better to build houses there and move out to Celbridge with the testing station. However, it is better to have it at Drumcondra than nowhere else. We still have not got a second pig progeny testing station.

The Danes are getting a conversion rate of 2.8 to 1 lb. of meat. We are getting 3.2——

Mr. Moher

We are not getting that.

Mr. Dillon

That is the general average. We are getting a general average of 1 lb. of meat for 3.2 lbs. of meal if you accept the rate of 2.8 lbs. of meal to 1 lb. of meat in Denmark. It is doubtful if either country is getting those specific figures on average but the relationship is the same. I think those figures derive directly from the progeny testing stations in both countries but over the whole lot, the differential remains of about a half-pound of meal to the lb. of meat produced in favour of Denmark, with a consequent advantage of £1 per pig.

It is open to us to improve marketing efficiency. We can do it just as well as the Danes and the way to do it is to take the restricted area first until supplies expand so that we can expand to the whole of England. It is open to us to improve the standard of our pigs by progeny testing but, as has been pointed out, we started 50 years after the Danes began and perhaps we should try to expedite the process more than the Danes did and if that involves bringing in special strains of pigs which we are satisfied are superior to any we have, I think we should do it. When I was Minister, I was extremely reluctant to do it. I was warned by our technical staff that the dangers in atrophic rhinitis were so menacing that the game was not worth the candle and I was prepared to try to improve the situation through the medium of progeny testing. I doubt if we can adhere to that strict rule now and I cannot but believe that it is possible under adequate quarantine arrangements to bring in new strains of pigs, if we are satisfied they are available elsewhere, better strains than we have ourselves. I do not yet despair of the possibility of getting, through adequate progeny testing, as good a strain of pigs in Ireland as there is anywhere in the world. If we cannot get them, we must expedite the process of improving the conversion rate of foodstuffs by getting new and better strains and bringing them in under conditions that will guarantee us so far as is humanly possible against the introduction of porcine diseases.

Is it true—as I believe it is—that the Danes have almost £1 per pig in hand because of their superior efficiency in manufacturing processes? I observe in the Estimates this year substantial sums provided for the bacon factory owners to bring their factories up to reasonable standards of efficiency. I do not think we can go on "foostering" as we have been doing.

When I was Minister for Agriculture, I made most strenuous representations to the bacon curers to modernise their premises and bring them up to the highest pitch of efficiency. I found it extremely difficult in the majority of cases to get any effective response from them. Some factories did rebuild from the ground up but I remember being informed of one factory where they were still slaughtering pigs on a wooden floor. I do not know whether that still obtains but it did obtain in one considerable factory a short seven or eight years ago.

The Minister now has a duty to inform the industry that effective measures must be taken to bring their standards of efficiency at least up to those obtaining in Denmark and that whatever is necessary must be done without delay to eliminate that differential of approximately £1 per pig between our costs and those of the factories operated by our competitors. If we could do that, if we could add to the price of every pig produced in this country £4, I think we have a potential export in Great Britain for more pigs than we could ever produce and without the payment of a subsidy of a penny to anybody.

The Minister has now been five or six years engaged in this operation. I fixed the price of pigs at 245/- and 240/- seven or eight years ago and it has remained at that ever since. On that basis, I believe pigs can be profitably produced if we could improve the conversion rate, if we could improve the marketing process. I believe the necessity for subsidising would be removed and the thought of surplus would be eliminated from the vocabulary of our farmers. Unless and until we can say to the creamery farmer, the livestock farmer and the pig farmer that surplus is a thing of the past, and that the more they produce, the more we will be able to sell not only to their advantage but to the advantage of the country as a whole, we will not be able to get real progress in this country. Everything I ever tried to do as Minister for Agriculture has been designed to eliminate the concept of surplus from our agricultural production.

There are some specific questions I want to ask the Minister. We have invested an immense sum of money in the eradication of bovine tuberculosis in this country. All I want to say about that is that once the British Government adopted that scheme, there was no course open to us but to adopt it and operate it also. That scheme and its effectiveness depend on everybody who is involved in it obeying the law and the law in regard to that scheme consists of a series of regulations designed to ensure that any certificate given by our Department of Agriculture is beyond question. Anybody who does anything to invalidate the undoubted veracity of a certificate issued by our Department of Agriculture or representations made by that Department is a public enemy.

I want to be reassured by the Minister that anybody discovered in such a transgression will be prosecuted to the limit of the law. I hope that before this debate concludes there will be such a reassurance forthcoming from the Minister as a notice to everybody that, having had ample time from 1954, eight years, to accustom themselves to the obligations of this scheme, the necessity for which is imposed upon us whatever our individual thoughts may be with the requirements of the particular export market we have, the time has now come when we must realise that everybody must conform to it. All of us have had the experience of inconvenience as a result of it. It is exasperating at times but we have got to accept it and conform to its requirements. I have had the experience myself; I have been exasperated by it but it can happen to anybody and there is nothing you can do about it except to take advantage of the scheme in anticipation of the day when we will be released from its restrictions, when T.B. has been finally eliminated.

There is a much heavier obligation on those moving cattle to realise the difficulties of enforcing the regulations unless there is a large measure of co-operation on their part. There is an exceptional obligation on those associated with the export of cattle to be more vigilant than the Department itself to ensure that the regulations are obeyed. I hope the Minister will be able to tell us that with regard to people charged with the movement of cattle, and especially those charged with the export of cattle, there will be no relaxation or concession made to anyone who withholds the full measure of co-operation that the Department of Agriculture is entitled to expect from them not to think of those who might try to avoid the regulations.

There is one detailed inquiry I want to make. We have 14-day tested cattle. We have attested cattle. The time is coming when the 14-day tested cattle will have no significance in our export trade and when the only cattle accepted for export will be attested cattle. Can we not provide some obviously coloured and marked ear tag for attested cattle? When cattle are being put on the boat, there is bound to be a great deal of confusion, hurry and bustle at the docks and surely it would be well if there were some outstanding feature about the ear tag on a beast which would indicate that he is an attested beast rather than make it dependent on an individual scrutiny of the obscure marking on each tag?

If we could provide a tag attached to a calf, yearling or mature beast which would be of a special identifiable colour, surely it would not be beyond the ingenuity of man to devise such a tag which could not be removed from the beast's ear without making it impossible to put it on the ear of another beast? If that were done, Dáil Éireann would be able to suggest penalties appropriate to the crime of forgery for anyone who sought to forge such tags or who sought to transfer them from the ear of one animal to another.

The matter is of such vital concern to the country that efforts should be made to find an ear tag of distinctive colour, an ear tag that could not be removed from the ear of the beast without destroying it, and penalties analogous to those prescribed for the crime of forgery should be prescribed for anyone who attempted to forge or misuse such ear tags. I do not want to say any more on that matter, but I know the Minister will want to reassure the House in regard to the issues I have raised so that they need not be adverted to hereafter, once we are certain that the necessary precautions have been taken.

There is a rumour circulating in the country consequent on some kind of a production report relating to the artificial fertiliser industry that the importation of basic slag will be prohibited. I should like an assurance that no such restriction is contemplated. Basic slag is a source of phosphate which is a very valuable one, because it is a great check on anyone attempting to fix an excessive price for phosphates. For reasons best known to themselves, the Government have re-imposed the 20 per cent. duty on superphosphate. When we were in office, we took off that duty. It is true that the Government have provided a subsidy for the superphosphate.

It is interesting to study the Appropriation Accounts as examined by the last Committee on Public Accounts where it transpired that as a result of a slight book-keeping error, the superphosphate industry was paid £90,000 more than they were entitled to, to compensate them, and which they had to refund. It shows you how difficult it is to keep track of the price of super, if no such accounts need be kept, as is the case at present as there are no imports as a result of the 20 per cent. tariff Fianna Fáil imposed. If anyone wants further particulars about that, I refer him to the Report of the Committee on Public Accounts of last year, where he will read the whole story. I should like this reassurance from the Minister for Agriculture that there is no question of interfering with basic slag imports which are of very great importance and of incalculable value, especially for grassland fertilisation.

There has been a great deal of correspondence and commentary in the newspapers about the nitrogenous fertiliser factory the Government propose to have set up. There are two questions in this regard that I should like to put to the Minister. I know that when I was Minister for Agriculture, this whole problem was one in which the voice of the Minister for Agriculture carried some weight. I want to ask the Minister is it or is it not true that An Foras Talúntais, the Agricultural Institute, maintain as a result of experimental work they have done that it is evident that ammonium nitrate is a very much more suitable nitrogenous fertiliser, especially for grassland, than any other, and if that is so, is it true that the proposed factory will not be able to produce ammonium nitrate and that it does not intend to produce it?

What is the use of having an Agricultural Institute which recommends ammonium nitrate, if we are to restrict the farmer to some other form of nitrogenous fertiliser which is not ammonium nitrate? Secondly, can the Minister give the farmers a guarantee that the fertiliser produced will be available to them at as cheap a price as they are getting it at present? If he cannot, I want Deputies to wake up to the fact that they may assess any extra cost in the nitrogen at what would correspond to one cwt. per acre of the agricultural land of Ireland. We do not use nearly sufficient nitrogen but if this nitrogen is to cost one shilling a cwt., or two shillings a cwt., more than it would be available from other sources, you may reckon it will cost the country 1,200,000 shillings, or 2,400,000 shillings, according to whether it is one shilling or two shillings, every year for all time.

The Minister for Agriculture ought to be able to assure us on these matters before the conclusion of this debate. We have moved to refer back this Vote because we believe the present administration is hopelessly incompetent. We believe the Government of which the Minister is a member have no appreciation or understanding of the urgency which presses on us in equipping the agricultural industry to meet the conditions of the European Economic Community and the wider international arrangements that I believe will inevitably ensue therefrom. We propose to vote against this Estimate because we believe the present Minister is incompetent or indifferent, one of which is bad and the other worse. We believe the future holds great prospects for the agricultural industry as a whole. We believe the small farmers can make a great contribution to the future of this country if they are given the opportunity of earning a decent living on their own holdings. We believe a Government who have sat idly by as the income of every other section of the community has been substantially increased while the real income of the farmers has been substantially reduced over the past five years is either mad or bad, and possibly both.

Fundamentally, I believe the only satisfactory solution for the problems confronting the country and the agricultural industry in particular is that the Government should go out of office. I hope that will happen soon but ad interim I can only hope and pray that certain indispensable and vitally urgent measures may be taken so that we may not have in respect of the requirements of the agricultural industry the 40 years' delay to which Deputy Moher so feelingly referred when commenting on the fact that prior to the introduction of the progeny testing scheme by the inter-Party Government, nothing had been done in this regard by the Fianna Fáil Party who had been 20 years in office prior to our election.

Mr. Donegan

The country, the farmers and the farmers' sons have had last week to consider the Minister's contribution when introducing his Estimate. He introduced it on a cheerful note, not cheerful in relation to the future but rather boastfully talking about what had happened during the year. I know from my contacts with many of these farmers and their sons and with the people that he just has not got it across. These people do not accept that for them last year was a good year. They do not accept the line that the Minister gives that it was a year of success. They do accept that they had smaller incomes and that it was a year in which they felt they were not getting the leadership which is so necessary if the agricultural industry is to proceed.

I quote from page 2 of the Minister's speech, the circulated version, which says:

Despite some difficulties brought about by unfavourable weather in the latter part of the harvest season last year, and in face of obstacles on external markets, our agricultural industry can look back on a year of striking progress, a year in which new records were achieved in production and exports.

The Minister has a good choice of words and when he talks about exports, he does not tell us about the reduction in the number of cattle. When he talks about production, his figures are again pretty well selected. I should like to give him one or two statistics in which he may be interested. If you take the cost of living in relation to base 100 for 1953, then in mid-February, 1962, that figure was 123.3, an increase of 23.3 per cent. If you take agricultural prices over the same period the figures quoted in this book of tables, "Economic Statistics, issued prior to the Budget, 1962,” then in relation to base 100 for agricultural prices in 1953, the figure was 96.9 last August or a drop of four per cent.

I will give the Minister everything and tell him, as he knows himself, that the latest figure circulated for last month, June, 1962, is 102. Let us call the average 100. We find that while the agricultural community who are, indeed, the most important section, have had to pay 23.3 per cent. more for what they bought, they accepted the same money for what they sold. Even in regard to the miserable pittance which the farm labourer in Ireland enjoys today—of course, "enjoys" is not the right word for it —from the 1953 level, the increase up to October, 1961, was 42 per cent. Yet everybody here knows that the farm labourer is expected to bring up his children and maintain his wife on that income. In fact, it is a mere pittance restricted by the low level of income of his employer and the failure of the income of his employer to increase with the income of the rest of the community.

This Estimate could have been used by the Minister to inform us as to what is coming, to propose a policy in relation to what appears to be our inevitable entry into the Common Market and to lead the agricultural community. Instead of that, it was used to fiddle with figures, to extract figures, to leave out figures and to produce statistics to show, while still untrue, that there were improvements in the agricultural economy last year.

The Irish farmer is getting a bit fed up with looking in through the window with his nose against the pane. During the past year, he did something about it: he extracted from the Government some £2½ millions by agitation for relief in his rates. An Irish farmer does not live like a businessman on the basis of his balance sheet from year to year. His rotation of several years means that his is a longer period of accounting. He is one of the few people still left in the world who, when times are really bad, can live on his own fat.

My measuring stick for whether or not the farmer is well off is the number of cattle he maintains on his lands. I do not believe that during the past year, notwithstanding the fact that there were many sales because of reactors in herds, the farmer was tempted by very high prices for all the mature cattle on our lands. There are now 112,000 fewer, if you take the January figures, than there were in the corresponding month the previous year. Let us take a computation quoted in the Farmers' Journal of Saturday, 7th July, which is based on the exports since then. I take it that their figure is reasonably accurate for the fewer cattle on the land on that date. The figure is 156,000. That indicates to me that the farmer is to some extent at least living on his own fat. Those were not the figures which the Minister emphasised in his contribution to the debate. The figure he emphasised was the increase in some measure in the number of milch cows and heifers in-calf.

Mr. Moher

Is that not the basic?

Mr. Donegan

That is the basic, yes, but the basic does not prove everything. The basic needs to be moved up to the level at which the depletion by the sales off the land will be completely arrested and we will be going up and not going down as we are at the moment. If Deputy Moher wishes to discuss with me the basic, I have no objection at all to discussing it with him. Before dealing with that, might I refer to a question which I addressed to the Minister on Thursday, 5th July, in relation to the average number of heifers being mated. In reply to that question, the Minister gives some information which he was not asked for at all. Let me quote from column 1717 of Volume 196, No. 10 of 5th July:

Mr. Smith: The number of cows in January, 1962, was actually a post-War record, despite operations under the Bovine Tuberculosis Eradication Scheme.

That, in fact, is incorrect. The number of cows in January, 1962, according to the Livestock Enumeration of that date, was 1,242,200. The number of cows, according to the Statistical Abstract for the corresponding month in 1958, was 1,260,400. That is merely a correction which is no great argument in itself. It just shows what Ministers will try to get away with when they want to prove things. From 1961 to 1962, taking the month of January as the comparison, there was an increase in the number of milch cows of 4,800, an increase in the number of heifers in-calf of 6,300 and a normal decrease, which we must expect, in the number of bulls, of 800. There was a decrease in the numbers of other cattle. A selling-off, which was far in excess of what the Bovine Tuberculosis Eradication Scheme could do, resulted in a reduction of 122,300 in the numbers of other cattle on the land. Therefore, we must take it that there was a serious reduction in the number of cattle on the land.

Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted, and 20 Members being present,

Mr. Donegan

In my view, that was a reduction far greater than anything which shows signs of being reproduced by the basic number of heifers in calf— and the number of milch cows referred to by Deputy Moher. The Government in 1958 laid before each House of the Oireachtas their Programme for Economic Expansion. Let me quote from paragraph 26 on Page 15:

The number of store cattle has increased considerably because of the great improvement in the survival rate of young cattle, but any further substantial increase in cattle numbers can be achieved only by means of an increase in the number of cows. The objective of policy will be to increase cow numbers progressively to at least 1,500,000 by 1964.

Let us examine what has happened. Let us not take any awkward dates but let us take the years by which the Government bound themselves. In 1958, there were 1,260,400 milch cows on the land. Today there are 18,200 fewer. In 1958, there were 130,200 in-calf heifers. In 1962—this is the only bright spot—there are 197,100, an increase of 66,900. When we subtract the decrease in the number of cows, that gives us a net figure of 37,800 over four years or 9,675 per year. In one year up to January, 1962, we have had a decrease in other cattle of 112,000. Up to the present, if we take the figures in the Farmers' Journal, there has been a total decrease in the number of cattle from 1958 to 1962 of 337,100.

The Government have failed to follow the path they laid for themselves. It is in cattle numbers we will get the increase in production necessary to carry us through. I thought the Minister might have availed of this Estimate to announce some new measures. I thought he might have said: "This situation is difficult. We have the Bovine TB Scheme and the trouble with reactors. I ask the farmers, as my predecessor did, to keep seven cows instead of five or 14 cows instead of ten. I ask them to mate their heifers as they come forward." But, instead, the Minister used this opportunity to say that everything in the garden is lovely.

The proof that it is not is everywhere. Since the Minister made this speech last week, every farmer and farmer's son will tell you he is not satisfied that everything is all right, that last year was a record year, but he is convinced that nothing is being done. There was a suggestion from this side some months ago that a subsidy on calves might possibly be considered. We have not got all the information here and cannot readily get it, so I am not suggesting that that would be a positive answer, but it is something that might be considered by the Minister. Another matter he might consider—it would be very easy to operate this through the Bovine TB Scheme—is a subsidy on the mating of heifers for the first time. The number of heifers coming forward is about 500,000 a year. We are retaining for breeding purposes an average of less than two out of every five, even if last year's high figures are maintained. At the same time, over the past three years there has been a reduction of 337,000 in the number of cattle on the land, due, as I said, to the farmer having to live off his own fat. The Minister spoke for an hour and did not advert to that fact or did not suggest that something should be done.

Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted, and 20 Members being present,

Mr. Donegan

If one requires further verification of the policy adopted by the Government of increasing cattle stocks, the path they laid out for themselves, one has only to refer to the Grey Book entitled Economic Development, page 211, paragraph 17, where it is stated:

It is vital to secure a substantial increase in cattle output. This involves an increase in breeding stocks, particularly in beef areas.

We have got some little increase in breeding stocks, depleted many times in its potential by the vast decrease in the number of other cattle on the land. We have had no indication from the Minister that he regards this as of any interest.

By 1965, the expected deficiency of beef in the EEC countries will be 380,000 tons per annum. Young, fat cattle will be needed for that market. That will mean an even faster depletion of stocks by killing. That will require an acceleration of breeding stocks at a rate above and certainly not below that set by the Government in the Programme for Economic Expansion in 1958.

The Government are hoist with their own petard. They have failed to jump the fence they set themselves. They have not even indicated what they are going to do about it, but have merely said that last year was a wonderful year. The Minister has not got it across to the farmers that last year was such. That is where he will fail. He has no hope of getting that across to the farmers, either now or in the future, if he does not advert to what is not going so well in our agricultural economy. Admit it. Say, if you like, it is not your fault, but indicate what you want the farmers to do about it and what you yourself will do.

The increase in pigs is satisfactory. I note in the same issue of the Farmers' Journal that the Castlebar Bacon Company are not having a good time financially or otherwise because of the small number of pigs in the West. I believe that the Minister for Lands who introduced Scéim na Muc, did not sufficiently organise that scheme to make it worth while. I intend to refer later in this regard to the large fattening centres which are doing such good work in the north of Ireland. Our sheep trade is satisfactory. There is a reason why the numbers of sheep on the land have increased. Every farmer knows you can stock an acre with sheep on less money than you can stock it with cattle. But there is a limit to the numbers of sheep you can feed unless you go in for intensive sheep farming and, if this is not done in a very clinical way, it will not succeed.

It appears to me that sheep farming is doing well, but it indicates also that there is a lack of capital, because farmers do not like land to get too tired of sheep. At the moment the increase in sheep numbers is due to the fact that a great many farmers could not stock their land with cattle. The trend is not general, but I can give individual instances of even large farmers who have virtually nothing on their lands but sheep, for the very good reason, and this is particularly true in the case of mountain ewes, that one can stock one's land with much less capital if one stocks with sheep.

As the Leader of the Opposition pointed out, there is a great opportunity on the Continental market for both lamb and mutton. As he also pointed out, it is true to say that at the moment Continentals do not eat mutton and lamb, but, as I listened to him, I was thinking of the quota for lamb we enjoy with France. The last I heard of it was an increased figure from £600,000 by something like 25 per cent. I understand that Irish lamb was making as much as 11/- per lb. in the Paris butcher shops. When we get to the end of the quota, we cannot, of course, send any more. When the Common Market comes, even though the ordinary Continental does not eat lamb, there is no doubt that there will be a considerable market for both our lamb and our mutton. That will be all to the good. I have never had the opportunity of eating lamb anywhere on the Continent except in Italy.

Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted, and 20 Members being present,

Mr. Donegan

I ate lamb in Italy last Easter. I can assure the House it is of very low quality indeed. I went so far as to visit the butchers to look at it. By our standards, it is more like goat than lamb. I believe we have a very big potential here. As the Leader of the Opposition put it, this is a trade that must develop. I suppose the opportunities we hope for from the Economic Community will start, in great part, with Britain when she joins and we inevitably join with her. At the same time, it is good to know that the market is there if we produce more.

I should like now to advert to the production of cereals. I have entire faith in the future profitability of cereal production, particularly if we enter the Common Market. Cereal production has been to a certain extent a rather vexed question for a number of years. The first fundamental is that the plough must go round the farm. If you want to have good grass, at least where you have arable land, the production of cereals tends to increase the output from every acre. There is no doubt about the fact that good land will produce, from new leas either in ensilage, hay or grass, whatever medium you like, as much food for livestock as double the acreage left unploughed. That means that, if we want to have good farming on our good land, the acreage of tillage must not decrease but must, if anything, increase slightly.

It must be remembered, too, that there is a vast investment by the Irish farmer for several years in tillage. The machinery is there; the land is there. The farmer has channelled his production in that way. To disrupt it would be very mistaken. I know it can be said that in many cases there has been over-mechanisation. That is true in the case of farmers with restricted acreages. Again, one must remember back to the days of the emergency when we were very glad to have our Irish wheat and the Irish wheat farmer was a patriot by nature of his calling. While all that may be historical to-day and have no bearing on the economic issues of the moment, it must not be forgotten. I regard it as the frame around the picture of cereal production at the moment.

I should like to point out the excellence of Irish wheat, barley and oats in a normal year. There have been sequences of wet harvests, almost two out of three, over the past seven or eight years and it has been suggested that Irish wheat cannot be grown successfully. It has been suggested that we should import all our oats. It has been suggested that Irish barley is a bit of a poor relation. I do not subscribe to that view at all. Not so long ago, I was speaking to a miller. He said that Irish wheat, while a soft wheat, and bearing no relation at all to hard Manitoba or the imported hards used in the grist, was probably the best European wheat, with the exception of the wheat produced in a very wet harvesting season. It is true that in most seasons we will have as good soft wheat as any of the Continental countries. When we enter the Common Market, I believe things will not be so bad at all. Arrangements have been made for the marketing of wheat, barley and oats. I will quote from the document laid before both Houses on 28th June, 1962, in relation to developments subsequent to the issue of the White Paper. At page 23, paragraph 41, it is stated:

The intervention authorities—that is the bodies responsible for supporting market prices—are obliged to purchase at the intervention price any domestic grain offered by producers.

I take it from that that all our grain will be taken up. At paragraph 42 of the same publication, there are the upper and lower intervention limits at which the intervention authorities will be obliged to intervene. For the purpose of my computations, I have taken the lowest levels, my idea being to produce, if possible, the worst situation that could result.

I should like to deal with wheat first. I refer to that which is fit for milling. Millable wheat is something we must just face up to in the light of whatever are the quality standards. If one looks at page 24 of the publication to which I have referred, one finds that, at the wholesale marketing stage, wheat would range per long ton of 2,240 lbs., from £43 3s. to £32 9s. Let us take a look at the figure of £32 9s. Seeing that the prices quoted are at the wholesale marketing stage I have taken the normal commissions paid for the services that would produce that wheat at the wholesale marketing stage, dried, to the normal figure here of less than 15 per cent. moisture, and I find these commissions would amount to £2 12s. I have then taken what I think is a very severe kiln-drying loss of ten per cent., which amounts to £2 19s. 9d., leaving the farmer, for wheat delivered to the door of whoever produces it at the wholesale marketing stage, a figure of £26 17s. 3d. or £3 7s. 2d. per barrel.

The upper limit is £10 per ton or 25/- per barrel more. Therefore if one takes the price of wheat at around 67/2d. per barrel with hardly any chance of moving up to the upper limit the situation is not that grim. In fact, while one would like not to suggest it at this stage, if there were a surplus of Irish wheat here it might well be that it could be exported to another European Economic Community country who would have a deficiency. I believe the situation will now change to what fundamentally it always should have been, that when these measures come into being it will pay the miller in the European Economic Community to use more European wheat. There will be a flat price to producers all over the Community affected by surpluses in each individual country but at the same time there is provision for a bulk levy on imports from abroad including hard Manitoba. Therefore the miller who can produce satisfactory flour with more European wheat will have cheaper flour, and for the first time the incentive will be to use more Irish wheat, more English wheat, more French wheat. I do not know what the result will be but reducing it to the language of the pitch and toss school, let us prognosticate on "the bob as it is set up". As I see the setting up of the market for cereals, things are not bad at all and anybody who has any idea that wheat growing will vanish had better re-think.

In relation to barley we can play two tunes. Irish barley for malting has one quite extraordinary virtue, it always analyses much better than it looks. In fact the analyses of Irish malting barleys are far better, when you compare them visually with the barleys from England, than you would expect. Irish malting barleys range in nitrogen content from 1.4 to, in a bad season, 1.6. That is quite sufficient to meet any standards in Europe. There are grave difficulties in our way before we shall be in a position to market it at the price that will obtain for malting barley in Europe. First of all, it is something that has to be judged visually at the intake points as the production of reliable nitrogen figures quickly is only in its infancy.

In this respect the laboratory is not of great value to us as yet. Therefore at intake points whether the buyers are grain merchants, whether they are millers who might buy barley and export it if they can get a better price than by milling it themselves, or whoever they are, there must be trained people standing at these points and doing as buyers and maltsters do, principally related to the firm of Messrs. Arthur Guinness Son & Company, visually examine and set aside 1,000 or 2,000 tons of it for shipment at less than 1.5 or 1.6 nitrogen content or whatever is the maximum. That is something the farmer cannot be expected to do. He can only produce the barley and tender it. He will have a good idea whether or not he is getting the rough end of the stick but there must be the expert people who can judge it. Through the South of Ireland buyers for Guinness's Brewery and through such companies as Irish Malt Exports Ltd. that has already been done.

A matter that was referred to the Court of Justice of the European Economic Community, was an arrangement whereby through a glorious fiddle the West German Government succeeded in paying their own farmers 85/- a barrel for barley and exacting a levy at a colossal figure per ton on imports knowing they had a vast market for beer, being a beer-drinking nation with a huge population which would need barley, and knowing at the same time that if they allowed their brewers to pay a lesser sum for imports and allowed higher prices to their German farmers they were keeping their own voters happy. I do not know whether that situation has as yet been rectified but it was referred to the Court of Justice of the European Community about twelve months ago. I hope that when we are all in the Community the position will be that even a portion of that vast market of German beer drinkers will be open to us. I do not say it will be an easy thing but if Irish exporters can send out loads of malt from this country manufactured from Irish barley, pay two or three shillings more than the feeding price while at the same time having to pay huge levies in each of these European countries they will be able to do a lot better, and so will other people. I believe the market for barley for malting, while not jumping spectacularly, will grow from a very small figure to a very large one so that, as in the case of the production of mutton and lamb, a great opportunity will be presented to us as soon as we are within the European Economic Community which I hope personally will be as soon as is humanly possible.

If one were to take on the same basis as that for wheat, the wheat commissions mentioned in the Wheat Order over the years, the minimum price for barleys, taking the same kiln-drying losses I took previously, one could have a figure payable to the farmer of £21 5s. 8d., that is, about 42/-. However, I have not the slightest doubt but that, when you take the malting barley prospects, home production prospects and the fact that on millet, or sorghum, on barleys and everything else from outside the European Economic Community there will be a bulk levy to help the producers, barleys will never reach that low level.

I do not say I am sure about wheat, but I am quite certain about barley. At present, barley is not being imported to carry the feeders over until next harvest because it is too dear, but millet instead. On the world market the situation is changing. The vast surpluses that were lying in disused ships and storehouses in America are being to some extent depleted and while there is no evidence of their disappearing altogether, at the same time, the market on imports from the other Continent is hardening. In the case of vegetable proteins, you are getting a rising market which will not be so good for the next ten to 12 months for our pig or poultry production but indicates that serious grain production inside the EEC will be possible and at the same time will increase the production from young leas as distinct from our old leas. This displays the wisdom of the adage: "One more cow, one more sow and one more acre under the plough."

The market for barley here for feeding must be seriously examined. At the moment we are importing to carry us over until the following harvest, thousands of tons of millet and maize—in fact I would say tens of thousands of tons. I believe that when the external levy follows and when pigs and poultry are produced within the EEC countries from grain also produced within, there will be an extra market here for us for at least £5,000,000 worth of feeding barley every year. Nobody wants to see ships arriving here with cargoes of maize and millet which are not as good feed as our own barley. While our arrangements here for handling malting barley are adequate, they are not quite so adequate for handling wheat and I think the arrangements for handling feeding barley are not as good as they should be.

The Grain Storage Loans Act, 1951, is responsible for all the large new grain installations we see all over the country where drying is speeded up during short harvests. The Leader of the Opposition was responsible for that, but it has been wound up to the extent that no more money is being voted for it. It could be reopened with profit. It can never be reopened again at the interest rate of a sinking fund of 35 years, at 4¾ per cent. These large installations are available in the midlands, at Ardee and elsewhere throughout the country.

I should like now to mention the arrangements, to which the Minister has given his blessing, for the judgment of wheat next harvest. I welcome any situation in which consultation and talks can settle difficulties, and this is such a situation. The position is that you have the Hagberg falling-number test and a colour standard test. The Hagberg falling-number test is the only test you can use quickly in the field. The practice is to have the test carried out twice so that any difficulties that arise can be rectified. The colour standard test does indicate the probable colour of the flour you will get.

I am not happy, however, on some aspects of the scheme. In my area, for instance, we have a large acreage of winter wheat and if you had the entire spring crop standing safely and got a bit of foggy weather at the end of August and consequently some sprouting of winter wheat, there would be hardship under the Hagberg test where you might have a rejection of 90 per cent. of the winter crop, while the main crop would still be standing safely. There does not seem to be any good reason why there should not be a segregation as the 5 per cent. or so of winter wheat which might have a slightly higher maltose as a result of sprouting, could be included without harming the flour.

If one reads the Farmers' Journal for July 15th last, one will see that I made a case in an interview and Mr. McDonagh of the flour millers made it quite clear, not in reply to me, that rigid standards were imposed and if they were interfered with, it was a case for the Government and the Minister. I, of course, do not hold that there is any necessity for this supreme rigidity because I believe that, by segregation, it is possible to set aside this wheat and use it for flour milling. I hope the Minister will consider this point and will let us know what his approach to it would be.

The question of agricultural investment is one which has been exercising our minds. One must remember that over the years the farmers have always been in the forefront in the battles. Every Irish trouble until 1916 was a land war. In pointing that out, I do not, of course, try to take away from the merits of 1916 and our previous efforts at independence. The feeling is there among our farmers that they must have something in the sock or they will go hungry in the future. Small farmers, particularly, have very little faith in financial institutions. This lack of faith can be shown up very vividly by comparing the pattern here with that in Britain, particularly in Scotland. Here, if a farmer goes out to buy a farm for his son, he has about two-thirds of the purchase money to put down. Say the price is £3,000— he has £2,000 and he goes to the bank and gets a loan for the other £1,000. On the new farm, the maximum amount is tilled in the first year, not with a view to future proper rotation but for a upment of the outlay. From there it takes this young man perhaps half his lifetime to get to the stage where, through proper rotation, he is getting a full return from the land.

In Scotland, where the land is still leased by the landlord, the landlords have largely become rent collectors and 6d. in the £ is as much as they have. The method devised to assess whether or not a man should get a farm is: (1) is he personally all right and (2) has he as much money as the farm is worth so that he can invest in the farm properly? How we will get that situation here is something that will not be solved today or tomorrow.

My honest opinion is that it is just as difficult to invest in the right way as it is to get the money. I laud and welcome the Agricultural Credit Bill which expanded the activities of the Agricultural Credit Corporation but I think there are other things to be done. There has been a suggestion from this side of the House that, for specified purposes which would be indicated by the agricultural instructor in the area, and approved of by the agency, or the Department, or the Agricultural Credit Corporation, interest free loans of £1,000 should be made available. That means that the man would have to repay the principal.

Under the present rate of repayments to the Agricultural Credit Corporation—which is one that comes to mind—if you borrow £100 and repay it over 15 years, your repayment is £10 1s. 8d. annually. In other words, if you have a 15 year borrowing period, your position is that you repay 150 per cent. If interest free loans were available for specified purposes, or for increased production, there is no doubt that there would be more applications for them and a greater willingness on the part of farmers to take them. That is an integration of the advisory services and practical application which will get us somewhere.

It may be said that that is a radical approach, that it is something that could not happen, that it is beyond us. Let us examine what has happened. About a month ago, Deputy Sweetman in reply to a question was given a long list of well-to-do hoteliers —and more luck to them; some of them are friends of my own—who got loans at half interest rates for 15 years. They took those loans and built new bedrooms or new hotels. I do not see why we cannot do the same thing for farmers, perhaps in a small way initially.

I also have an idea which the Minister might consider. If farmers wish to substitute by choice the interest rate on the loans for their grants for farm buildings, they should be allowed to do so. In other words, if a farmer felt that the unit he was getting the grant on and the maximum loan were too small, thereby in relation to the capital he had, fixing the size of the unit he could build, and if he felt it would be better if he could avail of a loan and devote the grant to the repayment of interest and let him pay only the principal, we would be getting somewhere. I have worked out some computations and I believe this is practicable, and one of the means by which we could increase production.

Mention has been made of the west of Ireland. I suppose we must admit in many areas in the west of Ireland the utter impossibility of living directly from the land. There must be an industry in the farmyard. They must have pigs—although the Castlebar Bacon Factory cannot get enough— and poultry. While the units are small, there is the advantage that the families are numerous. If there were a proper advisory service to co-ordinate the production of these people, you could produce a situation in which all these small units could organise and contribute to production, and have a large amount which could be marketed properly.

It is difficult to explain but there is one way in which Scéim na Muc could be extended by the Minister for Lands. If anyone goes to the residence of Mr. H. Jordan outside Lurgan, in the north of Ireland, he will find there 10,000 pigs being fattened in high temperature houses, a method with which some people agree and some do not. Those pigs are bought in. None of them is born on the farm. He has a better price than we have but the Common Market is coming.

I believe that large-scale experimental fattening houses should be set up in the west of Ireland. Sows should be given to farmers for specialised production of bonhams, with a minimum price taking into consideration bonham weight and age. They could take part in the production of perhaps 10,000 pigs. These people live down long lanes and they have to worry about the way the market moves, about whether or not they get Grade A or Grade B, and they have to get the feed to their places. A couple of sows do not take the same sort of specialised management in the last weeks of feeding as fat pigs, but they do take specialised attention at the time of farrowing which the man with time on his hands could give.

If one were to go a little further in the north, to Mr. Brian McGuckian's at Cloughmills, one would find 6,000 or 7,000 pigs which are born on the farm. Perfect methods of feeding. In an area where there is a large population, it is possible to have families with three or four sows here and one or two sows there over an area of ten miles. The Governmental fattening houses could do the rest and put up the capital because the feeding costs money. They could carry the pigs to a certain stage and then market them. I cannot see why that cannot be done at least in an experimental way. Of course, it is only by the parish unit, by integration of the advisory service with the actual application of effort, that you will get any sort of move forward.

Milk and milk products have been discussed at great length. Quite frankly, having watched the perambulations of the Minister over the past year or so, I wonder do Fianna Fáil want an increase in milk production. I subscribe entirely to the view that a cow must give milk and a calf to pay. If we are to face up to the future, the only way in which we can get increased breeding stocks is by giving the dairy farmer some sort of incentive also. It is no harm to study the prices of milk in the member States of the European Economic Community and the four countries which have made application for membership. I quote from the paper produced by Mr. Crotty for the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association. The prices are ex-farm prices or delivered to dairies. All these prices include skim milk at whatever the local valuations are. In Norway, the farmer receives 3/0½; in the United Kingdom 2/10½; in Italy 2/7; in the Netherlands 2/6½; in Germany 2/4; in Denmark 2/3; in Belgium and Luxembourg 2/3; in France 2/1½, and in Ireland the farmer gets 1/9½, including the value of the skim.

Now we are heading for the EEC. As it stands, the Community will have a surplus of 6 per cent. of milk products. Taking the four countries, including Ireland, that have applied for membership, that surplus is reduced to 4½ per cent. It is not a very big surplus.

The Leader of the Opposition mentioned, for instance, the market in Africa which is capable of development. I suggest that, just like other markets that are ready to be developed, it will take time: it will not happen overnight. There is no reason at all why we should not go forward with resolution and with faith in the future on the basis that if we enter the Community which has a population of 230,000,000 and there is a 4½ per cent. surplus of milk products, things will not be so bad that the bottom will fall out of the price of milk. Any reasonable man who had not the wind up completely would be quite certain that the bottom would not fall out of the price of milk. I honestly believe that while, so far, no arrangement has been made by the EEC for milk and milk products, such as has been made for cereals, the arrangement that will be made must fall into something the same sort of pattern as I have tried to outline—for cereals—and which can be found in the White Paper issued by the Government on 28th June, 1962.

Therefore what we should be doing is telling the farmers — as they were told from the opposite benches when the Leader of the Opposition was Minister for Agriculture — that they should keep seven cows where they were keeping five; 14 cows where they were keeping 10——

Mr. Tully

One more cow——

Mr. Donegan

Yes, one more cow, one more sow, and one more acre under the plough—and that, in the belief of the Minister, if the people do that, things will be all right. There is not any point in being cheerful about last year and not saying anything about the year to come.

There is the question also of what will happen if Britain joins the EEC and gets some sort of arrangement with the Commonwealth countries. There is one point about this to which I do not think many people have adverted. It is that Australia and New Zealand, when there came to be a surplus of milk and milk products in Britain, had a fund which they had been building up over the years by means of a levy on their milk. They decided that Denmark would not take the market and they started to drop prices. But, like every fund, it was not a bottomless well and eventually they came to the bottom of it. Prices have not gone up; they stayed where they were.

It is quite true to say that even if Australia and New Zealand have to pay a levy on their milk and milk products going into the Common Market and into Britain they still may get a better price than they are getting at the moment. In the Common Market context, there is no doubt that the price of butter will have to be related to the price of milk. If Britain will continue to pay 2/10½d. or somewhere around that figure—in this list, the figure appears to be about 2/6d.— then the price of butter will go up. If that happens, New Zealand will get more even though she will have to pay a levy unless she comes in on a preferential basis. She will get more money, anyway. I believe it will work out at a net increase. Therefore this problem may not be the major problem some people would have us believe it to be.

The Leader of the Opposition pointed out that the whole dairying industry needs to be rationalised. Anybody going through the creamery districts who looks at things as they are will know that that is true.

Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted, and 20 Members being present,

Mr. Donegan

I believe, therefore, that there is a future for milk and milk products when we enter the Common Market. That should have been the whole context of the Minister's speech —what will happen in the coming twelve months. Are we to drift along without a pig progeny testing station for another 40 years?

The Leader of the Opposition adverted to the fact that the whole dairying industry needs to be rationalised. I think that is true. In all our businesses and in all our activities, whatever they are, the shadow of the Common Market appears. Whether it be in doing with less labour, whether it be in introducing machinery, whether it be in closing one unit of production and doing twice as much in another place, whether it be by all these media, that is the way we have to operate.

I should like to develop what Deputy Dillon said in this way that, in addition, we need not only to diversify output of milk products but also to set targets for the various products. It is necessary now to make that decision for the future, as we can see it. We can still see it only through a certain haze. We must decide as to the quantities it is best to cater for in butter, cheese and other milk products and produce those set quantities or set up the machinery to produce them in the cheapest possible way. Then, just as Deputy Dillon pointed out, the Danes seem to have £s per pig on us in the economy of their marketing and in the advantage they have in a better breed of pig. Then we can look here for those extra pence per gallon and now is the time we have to do it.

While it is true to say that we have just appointed An Bord Bainne you cannot shelve everything on to a board. The man sitting on the opposite side of the House, the Minister for Agriculture, has the ultimate responsibility. It is his job to see to it that not only do we rationalise our milk production but also that we diversify it into products most easily saleable and in a way that we can achieve the target we want for each product.

Mr. P.J. Burke

The Deputy is talking as if we had an unlimited market and that we were not supplying it. That is the trend of his contribution to the debate. It is easy enough to blame the Minister for Agriculture for everything.

Mr. Donegan

Deputy P.J. Burke has just come into the House from the restaurant with a large smile on his face as if he were a cat after licking a saucer of cream.

Mr. P.J. Burke

Deputy Donegan was always an ungenerous gentleman.

Mr. Donegan

For the last while back, we have been doing a bit of work.

Mr. P.J. Burke

I have been in the House to-day.

Mr. Donegan

I see. I did not notice the Deputy.

An Ceann Comhairle

I suggest that Deputy Donegan be allowed to make his speech.

Mr. P.J. Burke

But it is terrible to listen to a lot of nonsense.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy has his remedy.

(Interruptions.)

Mr. Donegan

It is necessary at this stage not only to diversify but to decide on the quantities we can produce, relative to the amount of milk we have, of each product so as to sell them in the best possible way. In answer to Deputy Burke who suggests, I think, that we have not an unlimited market, there is always a best and a worst. I suggest that whatever the worst is it will not be so bad. We should join with the four countries that have already applied. It is our business to get the extra pence per gallon by seeing now that we get the best——

Mr. P.J. Burke

You gave them 1d. in six years.

Mr. Donegan

The Deputy is going out to have another saucer of milk. Mention has been made of grass products. There is no doubt we have the best set up for producing grass in the world, I suppose, outside New Zealand. I notice something that is developing and in my view will develop further, that is, the production of grassmeal. We had long arguments a long time ago here about grassmeal production in what somebody described as "the most derelicted bog in Co. Mayo." I am, however, referring to the production of grassmeal on very good grassland. The figure for usage here was something around 8,000 tons. While it is possible to produce the same clinical figures so far as analysis of compound foodstuff is concerned from ersatz chemical and pharmaceutical products, if you want to get the results obtainable from carotene and the many other excellent constituents of grassmeal, there is nothing as good as grassmeal.

We have been largely excluded from the Continental markets in this respect again by tariff walls or quota limitations. Production of grassmeal is something that can be expanded and I am glad to see many firms setting about the production of it in a large way.

About the nitrogen factory, I want to say that as far back as five years ago I was informed—and I have no reason to doubt that information—that there was a factory in Europe staffed by 17 men per shift which if it worked 24 hours a day for 365 days of the year could produce all the ammonium nitrate that the whole Continent, including Ireland and right up to the Iron Curtain, would require. To my knowledge there are three large nitrogen factories operating in Europe and we are going to build a fourth. It was reported in last Sunday's Sunday Press that the manufacturers of nitrogen were meeting in order to fix prices. I do not know what the outcome of that will be but if we are going to build a nitrogen factory we must look at things in a most hard-headed and materialistic way because, as instanced by Deputy Dillon, an extra 2/- per cwt. means 24,000,000 shillings or £1,200,000 to the Irish farmers. Two shillings a cwt. is a lot when you are competing with everybody who is selling, when you may lose your business because of 6d. or 1/-, but when it comes to Government action, 2/- can be very little but it is £1,200,000 to the farmers. I do not want to throw cold water on any scheme that might advance industry here but I think the Government should give us all the information and proceed in this matter in a more practical way.

In conclusion, may I say that the only way I can see of achieving here an advance to Continental standards is the integration of agricultural advisory services and agricultural education with at the same time the injection of capital into the land coupled with proper marketing facilities. The basis for all that must be something like what the Leader of the Opposition called the parish agent in every three parishes. You can have that in various ways, related to committees of agriculture or directly related to the Department of Agriculture.

All that was a very vexed question in the past, but, if you want a properly integrated production and progress you must have, first, agricultural education and the advisory services that such a group of men will give. Having done that you must do such things as I suggest might be done. You must look a little further than just making speeches and saying: "Go ahead boys and produce". Unfortunately, that failed in the past. You must bring yourself into things more closely. You must do something such as has been done in the production of cereals, for instance, in the east of Ireland. The farmer knows today that if he grows and markets a crop, it will be taken from him and dried and processed. A farmer in the west of Ireland may live quite far from any collecting point such as Castlebar Bacon Factory, for instance, or any bacon factory which would give a farmer a factory service. He must bring his pigs to a fair. The dealers come there and if there are too many pigs the farmer gets £3 less on that day. The profit on the pigs is only 30/- or £2 in any case, so where is he going?

We must try to do things such as Deputy Dillon did when he was Minister, when he set up the five county co-operative for marketing of agricultural produce and which quoted guaranteed minimum prices. In the case of turkeys, for instance, producers were told: "We will give you X-pence per lb. You market your turkeys and whatever the extra profits are when Christmas is over, we will send you your due share." We need that integration and advisory service to accomplish this. There is no indication in the Minister's speech that he intends to address himself to that or that he has addressed himself to the problems confronting us if we enter the Common Market—as we surely shall. At that stage we are right, I say, in voting against this Estimate and we shall do that and, as Deputy Dillon said, the sooner the Government get out and give the farmers of this country some hope, the better.

Mr. Blowick

The Minister at the outset of his speech was flapping his wings and inclined to crow because we had a very successful year last year. I think he attributed that largely to the increased export of cattle as indicating that everything is all right. Then he anticipated adverse criticism of the fact that we disposed of a great deal of cattle last year and says that it must not be thought that we are living on our livestock capital. In my opinion, we are, and we have been, living on our livestock capital.

My remarks will be principally devoted to one of the most serious problems facing the country at present, the wholesale flight from small holdings. I have asked the Minister on many occasions to state the Government's policy in regard to the small farmers, particularly along the western seaboard, but, in general, the small farmer all over the country. Will the Minister tell us now if the Government have decided that the country will be better off without the small farmers and, since they are going with their families to England, the United States, Canada and Australia, do the Government consider that is the best course for the country and that farming to-day would be best served by a community of large, comfortable farmers? If that is the Government's policy, it should be so stated. An exodus such as we have at the moment should not be allowed to continue without some declaration from the Government as to what they intend to do about it.

The statistics for the western counties, Cavan, Mayo, Donegal, Leitrim, Kerry and many other counties show that while the population of the towns and villages is holding its own, all the flight is from the land. For a number of years back, we have been giving grants to our rural dwellers to build new houses and improve their outoffices. In addition, many farmers put whatever little spare capital they had into new houses and better outoffices but, the moment they did that, they found that through the carelessness of the Government, they could not make a livelihood on their holdings and they had to pack up and flee the country.

I hope we will become a member of the Common Market. However, I can see, when we do and when the three main features of the Common Market, the free movement of men, money and goods, begin to operate, a host of German and Danish small farmers coming into this country and buying up the holdings from which our own people are being forced by a careless Government to flee. We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the price of medium agricultural land in Germany is between £400 and £500 a statute acre, around about the same price as in Denmark. The price of our land has been about £100 to the £1 valuation. A desperate state of affairs will have taken place if we have forced our own people off the land to seek an industrial life in England and then, on our entry into the Common Market, the investment of these people in houses, offices and improved land is to go for the benefit of people who come in here, foreigners who have no part in our aspirations, national or otherwise.

The Minister tells us that we have had a good year and tells us that the income of the farmers has gone up by £8,000,000. The hard, cold reality of the situation is that farmers have had to sell 112,000 more of their cattle to pay their bills. Their cost of living has been going up year by year while their incomes have been deteriorating and nothing has been done about it. It is beyond their capacity to increase production and, whenever they manage to do so, all they do is knock the bottom out of their own market by over-production. The £8,000,000 additional income has not come to the farmers. They have been forced to sell their cattle to pay their debts.

The Minister tells us that there has been an increase in the sheep population of 269,000. That is a little over two sheep per bullock that has gone. That is no balance at all. Even on poor land, the average balance per bullock is four sheep so that the increase in the number of sheep to compensate for the loss in cattle would need to be more than double the figure the Minister has given us. Deputy Donegan has rightly mentioned the fact that the number of in-calf cows and heifers is not sufficient to fill the gap caused by the increased exports of last year. The figures the Minister has given us in the notes on the main activities of his Department bear out that fact.

It has often been said in this House, and it will bear repetition, that agriculture is the industry that keeps the wheels of this country turning. The Minister told us clearly in his statement that the exports of agricultural produce make it possible to import 70 per cent of all the things we need in this country. The Minister has not measured up to his job, particularly in so far as the keeping of the small farmers on the land is concerned. He set up an inter-Departmental Committee in April, 1961, to inquire into the problems of small western farms. Why does he designate the small farmer as the western type farmer? I resent that implication very much. The small farmer in Dublin, Cork, Donegal, Monaghan, or Cavan, whence the Minister comes, is just as badly hit as the small farmer in the west.

The population of County Mayo in 1936 was 161,347 and in 1961, it was 123,180, a fall of 24 per cent. representing a loss of 38,300 people. The population of Cavan in 1936 was 76,770 and in 1961, it was 56,559, a loss of 26 per cent. or one in every four people gone. The small farmer is a small farmer in any county and with the consistent increase in the cost of living and his income remaining static, he is being forced off the land. The small farm is all right now for the bachelor or the old maid. It is all right for a person with a pension but it is no good otherwise. We always took a valuation of £10 as being a reasonable holding. That was 30 or 40 years ago but today it is nothing more than a stand.

That inter-Departmental Committee found that the decline in population could be attributed to four main causes which they set out:

(1) The disinclination of young people to remain at work on holdings which do not provide what they regard as worthwhile cash incomes, coupled with the availability in Britain of jobs paying comparatively high wages. This movement to higher incomes and higher living standards is prevalent in many countries but it is probably accelerated here by the ease with which people can emigrate.

(2) The fact that the general run of farmers in those areas are not in a position to benefit from fixed price crops and commodities such as wheat, barley, beet and milk.

(3) The loss, for reasons referred to later, of "farmyard" income from pigs, poultry and eggs, and increased dependence on stock raising which is extensive in its use of land, uncertain financially as a system of farming and not well suited to smallholders.

(4) Lack of industrialisation.

That sums up tersely what is happening.

What has the Minister to say in regard to the "farmyard" income, which in many cases was the main-stay of the small holding, and the loss from pigs, poultry and eggs? Poultry are a thing of the past. The hen has gone; turkeys have gone. These were the two principal branches of poultry which brought in a steady income to the household. Many a good, thrifty housewife reared her household on the income from poultry alone. The Minister has the unique distinction of wiping out that industry.

As I said, I want to devote my remarks mainly to the small farmer. The large farmer is all right. He has the land to work and the income to induce his sons to stay at home. Not long ago I spoke to a man who reared five sons and several daughters and he told me that even though, by our standards in Mayo, he is fairly comfortable, his holding has failed to induce one son to stay on the land. All of them have gone to England. The last one to go told him that he did not want to be a slave like his father, and that if he married he did not want his wife to be a slave like his mother. The fact that farmers are not organised and do not seem to be able to stick together as trade unionists do, should not be availed of by the Government to exploit them, or to regard them as hewers of wood and drawers of water, or as people who produce taxes to run the country but who are given nothing in return.

Government speakers both inside and outside the House made great play on the relief of rates. The relief of rates was only a little help. How much value was it to the man with the £10 valuation? It meant something like £3 or £4 to that man in Mayo. Do the Minister or the Government think that £3 a year will induce anybody to stay on that holding? The Minister has told us on many occasions that it is all very fine to be critical. I should not like to be merely critical. I should like to give the Minister the benefit of what I think is the best approach, taking for granted that the Government are serious about retaining the small farmers. If they are not serious the Minister can disregard what I am about to say. It must first be realised that a pall of despair and despondency has fallen on the small farmers and I do not blame them for that. They see their companions going and they are wondering, particularly the married men with families, when their turn is to come, when they will have to pack up and go.

Although I dislike saying it, the first thing that will have to be done will be to give some financial help in order to retain them on the land. Secondly, something in the nature of the parish agent plan will have to be developed to induce or to coax them to engage in intensive production on their small holdings. Of course there must be a market for what they produce. I hope any such scheme, if it is attempted, will not be killed at the very outset by the soul destroying effect of having them produce good commodities only to find that there are no markets for them.

The Minister has excellent officials in his Department—certainly I have the greatest respect for them—and if they were given a lead and told what to do they would do it. The reason why the small farmers are leaving is that the income from their holdings is not sufficient to keep them at home. Employment in rural areas is a thing of the past. There is no employment there any more and the county councils give employment only to a few. The small farmers need a good deal of part-time employment because their holdings are not sufficient to keep them fully occupied. There was a ludicrous attempt by the Minister for Lands to set up glass-houses for the growing of tomatoes in Tourmakeady and in Galway but a storm scattered them. I believe they were of bad design and totally unsuited for the growing of tomatoes. The growing of tomatoes will not be the salvation of the small farmers and if the Minister wants to retain them on the land something on the lines I have pointed out will be required. For a start, some monetary help is required. I hate to use the expression because it carries the same kind of taint as the dole does, or anything that is given free, but, at the same time, it is necessary to do something along those lines.

It is time that the Government considered putting the Land Commission under the control of the Minister for Agriculture. I say that not because I have lost faith in either the officials or the Minister but in view of the enormous number of derelict holdings all over the country. It is time for the Minister for Agriculture to have a new look at the whole problem of resettlement on the land. A short time ago the problem of the Land Commission was to find land for the people but the time has come when the difficulty is to find people for the land. For that reason I think the stage has been reached when the Minister for Agriculture should have the administration of the Land Commission. As well as the Minister having the Land Reclamation Scheme, which was started by Deputy Dillon when he was Minister for Agriculture, under his control the branch of the Special Employment Schemes Office dealing with the drainage of good arable land should be under his control. I do not mean bog drainage or general drainage but in any case where people are prevented from carrying out a land reclamation scheme because outfall is not good enough or because the Minister's officials have to wait for some other Department, the Special Employment Schemes Office, say, to do a major job first. The Minister should take over that office and use it to carry out his land reclamation job.

I want to pay a high tribute to the men doing that work because many a time I heard it said that were it not for land reclamation, arterial drainage and forestry Ireland would be a very derelict place, at least in so far as the rural areas are concerned.

I know of several cases where farmers could benefit from drainage. They have got good arable land which is subject to flooding. The work cannot be done until drainage work is carried out under the arterial drainage scheme or by the Special Employment Schemes Office. The Minister should ask the Minister for Finance for money for that purpose. I have made representations to the present Parliamentary Secretary and his predecessor in relation to my own constituency. There are about 28 farmers concerned. The land under water for five months of the winter comprises about 250 acres. They are 250 acres of the very best land. The unfortunate farmers are paying rent and rates, and dear rates, at the present time for that land. They cannot do a single thing about the matter. They have been to every Deputy in an endeavour to get something done but no Government to date seem to be able to do anything about the matter. That is very discouraging to those people.

In the circumstances you cannot blame people for saying that this is no country to live in and that no Government seem to be interested in their problems. If the Government are genuinely interested in retaining the few small farmers left, they ought to do something about the matter at once. The recommendations contained in the Report of the inter-Departmental Committee do not go very far. They will not go to the root of the trouble. With the advent of the Common Market, it will be galling for those who have fled the land to see foreigners buying cheaply property upon which our people have spent their capital and labour.

Mr. Moher

I am just wondering what kind of small farmer Deputy Blowick speaks of. I know quite a considerable number of small farmers. There is a very large area of Cork county where there are small farmers. I know people not very far from where I live who are hillside and foot-hill farmers. None of these people would preach the gospel of despair which we heard from Deputy Blowick. If Deputy Blowick studied seriously the report of the inter-Departmental Committee he would find the problem set out. He would find that the small farmers in the West of Ireland are people who follow a pattern of agriculture, if you could call it agriculture. Deputy Blowick continually used the word "farming". Farming in the west of Ireland, as far as I know, can consist of anything. He did not use the word "agriculture" right through the whole thing.

We have this peculiar kind of set up. The emphasis is on cattle there. Cattle seem to be the one major type of production that these smallholders in the west of Ireland follow. We all know that many years ago a famous Irishman said that grazing and depopulation go side by side. That is more true today than it was when he repeated that up and down the country. I was speaking to a horticultural instructor the other night who told me in relation to crops harvested by smallholders that many of these crops would bring in between £300 and £400 a statute acre. Deputy Blowick talks about the miserably few parasite ridden cattle in the west of Ireland from which these people have to make a living.

Mr. Blowick

I did not say the cattle were parasite ridden.

Mr. Moher

The whole problem of the people in the west of Ireland is that they have adopted a system of agriculture and agricultural husbandry which is extensive rather than intensive. They adopt on fifteen acres exactly the same kind of pattern of agriculture as those on 100 or 200 acres follow. To put it briefly, they ranch on 15 acres. How can Deputy Blowick or any Government Minister solve a problem when that is the kind of pattern these people follow? Deputy Blowick should be out on the hustings trying to persuade these people to change their pattern.

Mr. Blowick

The Deputy should talk about his own farmers and not run down mine. I have talked about the west. Let Deputy Moher talk about his constituency. The Deputy is telling the Minister not to pay any heed to the small farmer.

Mr. Moher

Instead of coming in here and shouting that type of despair, Deputy Blowick should go out among his constituents and tell them their overall problem cannot be solved as long as they continue the pattern of agriculture which they have been pursuing for the past 100 years.

Mr. Blowick

I would need to go over to England to follow them all.

Mr. Moher

The problem of the west of Ireland is an historical problem. It is the result of Cromwell's dictum of "to hell or to Connaught". Many of the congested districts in the west have their origin in the policy of Cromwell. Because their ancestors were displaced persons they suffer from the problems which were created when they were dumped there. They must emigrate. There has always been emigration. Deputy Blowick may never have emigrated but I have and I have seen these people. In the 1930's they were migrants when they came over in the spring. They disappeared some time in the late autumn and went back to spend Christmas in Ireland. Then they reappeared in the agricultural areas of the north of England and elsewhere.

When the war came and as a result of the devastation which followed, these people found permanent employment. They did not have to be migrants any longer. They were people with brawn and muscle. They switched from the "tatie" fields of the north of England and Scotland to the building sites and many of them, who were formerly migrants, became emigrants. They settled down there. Then followed the general reaction to their writing home and telling their people how well they were doing. Deputy Blowick cannot persuade the younger people in the jet age to accept £5 a week when they know that within a flight of an hour or two from them they can earn £15 a week.

Mr. Blowick

That is the three million which the former Taoiseach, President de Valera, was to bring back in 1932.

An Ceann Comhairle

Deputy Blowick has made his statement and he should allow Deputy Moher to speak without interruption.

Mr. Blowick

It is very hard to listen to that kind of tripe. Flesh and blood could not stand it. Rather than cause a rumpus, I will leave.

Mr. Meaney

Stand your ground.

Mr. Moher

I am trying to give the historical facts. I am not trying to perpetrate a political fraud. I am trying to persuade the people in this House that the problem is not a problem begotten by Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. Of course, it is not. The problem is a complex problem. The problem of these smallholders is much more difficult of solution than those elsewhere. Deputy Dillon and Deputy Blowick talked about the drop in the pig population. Why cannot the holder of 10, 15 or 20 acres in the West keep a sow?

Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted, and 20 Members being present,

Mr. Moher

Why cannot the smallholder in the west vary his husbandry? Why cannot he have two or three sows and do like the smallholders down in West Cork and produce a farmyard income? Why must he emigrate? Why cannot he get down and do the job like the smallholders in Cork? Any Deputy from West Cork will tell you there are holdings there as poor as anywhere in the West. Within view of where I live, I can see these smallholders up to 2,000 feet on the Galtee foothills. They are first with their hay crop, first in everything. Why cannot these people in the West do the same thing? It is no use saying this is a political problem. It is no use for the people on the opposite side to say this problem was created by Fianna Fáil and that Fianna Fáil are doing nothing about it. Deputy Dillon knows that the Congested Districts Board and its successor, the Board of Works, have been pouring out wrapped-up dole in one form or another. Deputy Blowick objects to the word "dole". But, west of the Shannon, successive Governments have been giving hundreds of thousands in wrapped-up dole. Bog road development and all that kind of thing is wrapped-up dole to keep these people literally from starving. They have lost the will to help themselves. The Deputy echoes the despair which seems to have cast its shadow over all that area.

You will find these people working in the industrial areas of Coventry and Birmingham, forgetting about their holdings and earning big money. I have met them in the public houses. They are not worried about what they left behind. They have all the advantages of the welfare state. They have a certain social security and plenty of money. They have the bright lights. They are not very far away from home. If they want to come back and see the old people, they can be back in a matter of hours. It is much easier for these people to get out and to get down to it than to try to subsist by remaining on. I am prepared to admit that, under any pattern of husbandry, many of these holdings would provide for the people who work on them only a subsistence living.

In 1962 few of our young people will accept that kind of subsistence existence. The simple life of 40 or 50 years ago is not acceptable to the boys and girls of 18, 19 and 20 to-day. If they see an opportunity of getting out and bettering themselves, they have not the slightest hesitation in taking it. Many of them have a huge segment of the known world to travel and they have the advantage of speaking the English language. Thirty or forty years ago the people emigrated to America for a lifetime. To-day it is not unusual to see people who emigrated back every other year for a month's holiday. We live in the jet age. We cannot get away from it. It was never easier to travel long distances. These people are not going to bury themselves and continue the kind of subsistence living Deputy Blowick and others would condemn them to, no matter what they did.

That is the complex situation revealed by this very factual report. Whether we are on this side or on the Opposition benches, we all have to make a contribution if this problem is to be solved. It will take the collective effort and brains of everyone here to find a solution. That solution will not be found in the lifetime of any one Government or of several Governments. Instead of trying to misrepresent the position of these people, we should offer suggestions, get together and do the best we can to find some solution for their problem.

The problem of the smallholder is not an exclusively Irish problem. In Great Britain, one of the most highly industrialised countries of its size, the same problem exists. Experiments which have been carried out in a number of research stations over the past 10 years have revealed a rather significant picture. The small holdings there are disappearing. Various types of animals and crop husbandry have been tried out in the research stations on farms varying in size from 20 to 50 acres. The overall conclusion is that the small holding is disappearing.

When I asked one of these people what the main reason for this was, he simply said: "The younger people who have been brought up on these farms think in terms of a cash return for man-hours worked. Under the types of husbandry we have been trying out on these small farms, these people cannot obtain for man-hours worked the same return they would get as industrial workers." That is one of the reasons. We all know they could not hope to get the same conditions of employment on these small holdings as they would get in industrial employment. We all know that farmers in Continental countries do not think in terms of hours worked. They work from sunrise to sunset. If one goes out in the morning at six o'clock, the farmers are out working on the land. You can travel through the whole of Munster and, outside the dairying areas, you will not see a farmer in the field at eight o'clock or nine o'clock in the morning. Our farmers will not work the hours the Continental farmers do as their normal day.

We will have to consider all these factors when we go into the Common Market because these are the farmers with whom we will be in competition. Deputy Dillon, at one stage of his career on this side of the House, used to talk about farming as a way of living. He used to assert that we in Ireland did not have to do the awful things the Danes, the Dutch, and the Scandinavians had to do in order to make farming pay. We just took things easy. We went to two or three race meetings in the month during the racing season. In the middle of the summer, when we should be saving hay and filling the silos, we went down to Killarney under the auspices of Muintir na Tíre for a fireside chat.

Where will one find the Danish or the Dutch farmer in the month of June? Not in Killarney, having a fireside chat, away from his farm for four or five days. These are aspects we must consider. The Continental farmer makes a living, and a good living, on a farm of not more than 25 acres. These farmers are not feather-bedded as our farmers are. We know the situation that obtains. Picture the son of an Irish farmer being put in the same position as his Dutch opposite number. The Irish farmer does not retire with an annuity, leaving the eldest son to work the farm, and sending the others out into the world with an education. The Dutch farmer sells the farm to his eldest son, the son getting the necessary capital from the Land Bank; some of the money is distributed amongst the others. Suppose an Irish farmer endeavoured to adopt the same system. Suppose he told his eldest son he could have the farm for £3,000. Where would the son get the capital? Would he go to the bank and start married life with a debt of £3,000 to the bank? Would it be possible for him to work it off under our system? It certainly would not.

The Continental farmers work hard, and they work long hours. Our farmers are not prepared to do that. If the son of a small farmer here were asked to go into the fields at six o'clock in the morning and work until sundown, the first thing he would do would be to scrape together the single fare, disappear, and leave the land behind him. These are the comparisons we must make. They are irrefutable. These are the comparisons that show our position vis-á-vis the small holders in other European countries. That is why these farmers can make a living and our farmers cannot. They get a greater output per acre per man per farm unit of production. On the dairying side of our economy, we produce something like 50 lbs. of butter fat per acre. The Dutch regard 250 lbs. as too low. There is the problem. All the statistics are available.

Comparing farming incomes with industrial and other incomes is a fallacious line of reasoning. If the civil servant puts two days work into one day, he is paid accordingly. Surely no one will argue that if you own a piece of land—be it 20, 30 or 40 acres—you have within your grasp a potential which does not limit you to what you can produce? Is that not the real fallacy in making a comparison between the farmer's income and that enjoyed by the civil servant or the industrial worker?

Why is this House not used to point realities? Why do we try, for political purposes, to misrepresent the situation? Our farmers are not stupid. They are mature people. They read day after day about what goes on in this House — attack and counterattack, misrepresentation and refutation. In the local pub, they call this House "the Gas Chamber". I came in here in 1954. I know that today we are not getting the kind of objective debate that we should have in this House. The standard of debate has deteriorated with the years. When I came in here, I was sitting on the benches on which Deputy Dillon now sits and Deputy Dillon was over here as Minister for Agriculture. The records are there. I defy anyone reading the records to prove from anything I said on successive Estimates here that I was a member of the Fianna Fáil Party. I gave credit when credit was due. I criticised when criticism was called for. Why cannot we have that type of debate today? The time of the House is taken up now with speakers scoring debating points. Deputies representing the rural areas are so disgusted that they have now ceased to talk here. I certainly would not waste time discussing some of the matters that have been debated here at length. Now, at the last moment, we are trying to race through one of the most important Estimates of the year. We are running against time.

Mr. Dillon

Oh, no.

Mr. Moher

As far as I know, we are.

Mr. Dillon

I do not know of any time limit.

Sir Anthony Esmonde

It is the Government who are racing.

Mr. Dillon

I took particular care that no such time limit would be placed on the Agriculture Estimate.

Mr. Moher

I do not want to speak about the kind of small holding to which Deputy Blowick referred or the kind of people who, as I gathered from him, have lost the will to stay there. They want to get out. They are fugitives from these areas and from the problems which they refuse to tackle. Governments can operate schemes. Governments can give aid but in the final analysis, God helps those who help themselves. If these people have decided to jettison pigs, to abandon everything except a few cattle and go from one fair to the other flashing "bluebacks" and giving the impression they are wealthy people, that is not farming. I am glad Deputy Blowick used the word "farmer". "Farmer" covers a very wide class of people who squat on the land. There is a big difference between a "farmer" and an "agriculturist". I am not going to define the word "farmer" but these people are not agriculturists.

Mr. Dillon

Was the Deputy ever in the province of Connaught or was he ever in Monaghan or Cavan?

Mr. Moher

I was.

Mr. Dillon

He does not sound like it. He might as well be a Peruvian talking.

Mr. Moher

The inter-Departmental Committee Report referred to structural alterations on some of these holdings. That has been one of the main problems of the Land Commission for years, the re-arrangement of these holdings. However, no matter what structural alterations are made on a small holding, what will count and what will keep the owner on the small farm is the income he can derive from it. The problem is to teach him, if he has the will to learn, how to increase his income. If the pattern continues to be a few cows, a few sucking calves, the person who follows that pattern of farming on a 10, 15 or 20-acre holding——

Mr. Dillon

Who follows it?

Mr. Moher

——is bound to disappear because he has condemned himself to what we must describe as sustenance living.

Mr. Dillon

I wonder who this mysterious individual is. Would Deputy Gilbride know any of them in Sligo?

Acting Chairman (Mr. MacCarthy)

Deputy Moher is in possession.

Mr. Gilbride

Play-acting on any side of the House does not impress me one bit.

Mr. Dillon

Would Deputy Moher take note of that?

Mr. Moher

Deputy Dillon mentioned the problem of how to teach these people to produce more and better grass, how to get them to expand the grazing periods in the early spring and the late autumn. If that can be achieved on the small holding, they will be able to increase the number of animals they can carry and if it is a dairy holding, we can certainly help them to increase milk yields and they can get away from the 440-gallon cow. We shall be up against people with cows giving approximately twice that output. If four or five cows producing 600, 700 or 800 gallons are carried that will definitely improve the position of the dairy farmer and he will not be worried about a penny or a halfpenny increase. If there is increased production, there will be no row about price, whether an extra penny or halfpenny should be provided, because once that penny or halfpenny is obtained, it is absorbed by some other charge.

Mr. Dillon

How does the Deputy propose to increase that?

Mr. Moher

Again, there is the problem of winter feeding. Over a great area of our country, there are hundreds of farms where cattle are doing well for the summer but when it comes to winter, they are not maintained as they should be. We must veer away from hay as a main fodder crop because probably only one in every three summers is suitable for saving that fodder. If we can increase grass production in the spring and autumn and if in the meantime we can conserve good silage, we will have better conversion units. Many of the cattle which are housed in good conditions live for most of the winter off the beef on their rumps. If they are starved during the winter time, it is bound to impair them for the early summer.

Mr. Dillon

How would the Deputy remedy that?

Mr. Moher

By a more rational system of control in relation to grazing, by better manuring and better liming.

Mr. Dillon

Who is to teach that?

Mr. Moher

I do not want to be subjected to cross-examination.

Acting Chairman

The Deputy ought to be allowed to make his speech.

Mr. Dillon

I only want to find out——

Acting Chairman

I would ask the Deputy to let Deputy Moher make his speech in his own way.

Mr. Dillon

He is saying nothing.

Mr. Moher

The Deputy will not get me off the track. A great friend of Deputy Dillon said after leaving Ireland: they have reared cows that eat much and give little. Can he tell me who was the person who made that statement? Another foreigner who came to this country said that the fields of Ireland were growing physically as little grass as it was possible for them to grow under an Irish sky. These are the observers who come in here and make assessments of us which we refuse to make of ourselves. Another person who was here only three or four months made a much more objective assessment of us as a people and of our position as agriculturists than anyone in this House would ever attempt to make. Why then do we refuse to see ourselves as these people see us? Why do we not get up and say: "This is the problem as enunciated by somebody who was neutral, somebody who stood on the sideline and made an assessment of the situation"?

No—blame Fianna Fáil and try to score a petty debating point. Try to seize on a point to gain political support by resorting to what I can only term as fraud. One of the things on which we will all agree is that if we are to enter into international competition with our dairy produce, we must improve the standard of our milk production. We must not get away from the fact that the same problem is also there in relation to beef. If we go into a market or a fair, we will see first-class animals, beautifully finished, side by side with underdeveloped, hide-bound, parasite-ridden yearlings. That is because, on the one hand, there could be a soil or a farm problem, but on the other, there could be the fact that the owner does not know how to treat his animals.

We must ask ourselves why, if a man chooses to make his living in that way, he does not try to learn something about the business. How many farmers, for instance, who make their living from livestock can go out and identify ordinary animal disease? How many could tell you what ordinary disease an animal is suffering from—diseases which mean so much in farm losses every year? I have often heard people talking about their losses from this, that and the other disease—losses that could have been prevented, if they knew how to identify the disease at the outset and therefore treat it

In an earlier contribution here, I referred to beef production and I should like now to reiterate what I then said, that it is as vital for us to improve our beef production and our store and beef cattle as it is to improve our dairy herds. I was looking recently at a report in a German scientific magazine on experiments carried out on bull calves. I was amazed at the results. They experimented on 41 calves which were eventually slaughtered at 8 cwts. Each had consumed 23 gallons of full milk, 90 gallons of skim milk, 9 cwts. of concentrates, 5¼ tons of beet and silage and 8 cwts. of hay. They had never seen a field; yet at slaughter they weighed over 8 cwts. each. That should give some idea of competitive efficiency when it comes to trying to win a place for our cattle in a common market.

That brings me to progeny testing and bull testing. In our stations, I think we have fallen down on this job. During a previous debate here, I discussed conversion rates in respect to beef cattle and related them to experiments carried out in America. I know that as far as dairy bulls are concerned the breeding potential is known, but we have very few beef bulls in Ireland about whose conversion ratio we know much. If we are to maintain our place as exporters of first-class cattle, beef or store, we must wake up and examine the position.

I referred to pig production earlier, when attempting to reply to a point made by Deputy Blowick. No matter what you do in the field, no matter how efficient you are, you cannot afford to neglect what I might describe as farmyard income economics. Pig production is very definitely a subsidiary of dairying. Very often we debate here the problems of producing grain and of having it transferred from the south to the big pig producing areas where grain is not grown to any considerable extent—the problem of having it transported and made available in these areas at a price which will enable producers to market pigs at a reasonable profit. I would ask in this connection what has happened to potato production. The older Deputies among us will recall that the bulk of our pigs were once fattened on potatoes. They formed a very high proportion of the pig ration in earlier years and we know that the bulk of Danish pigs are not fed on high protein compounds as are ours.

In Denmark, pigs are fattened on potatoes, skim milk, fodder and beet and the Danes are able to beat us anywhere on grading with that type of feed. Why then has our potato production in connection with our bacon economy disappeared? A good acre of potatoes will provide twice as many pig feed units as an acre of barley. In Cork, where there is considerable grain growing and where farmers can go out and plant one or two acres of barley and convert it into pig feed, that is all right, but in areas which are not good grain growing districts, but where you can grow first class crops of potatoes, it is quite a different matter. Why do not our people know how best to gear their physical surroundings so that they can produce the best possible animal at the smallest possible cost?

Deputy Donegan referred to the pig fattening units and he associated Northern Ireland with that development. Of course, there is a considerable number of very large pig fattening units attached to the southern creameries. In the town I come from there is a pig fattening unit which probably turns out something like 12,000 pigs a year on the by-product of the cheese which is manufactured there. They are fed mainly on hay which has a pig feed equivalent in the ratio of about three-quarters of a pound to a gallon of whey. I cannot understand why this development cannot be extended to every creamery in the area.

Again, Deputy Dillon spoke about the diversification and federation of the dairying industry. Ten years ago the Danes eliminated the uneconomic small branches and stream-lined their whole dairying set-up. We have been terribly slow about that. If you go to the dairying areas of the south, and particularly in County Limerick, you will find a small co-operative practically every ten miles of the road where the creamery manager is the Rainier in his own Monaco. He does not want federation. He wants to be the be-all and end-all in his creamery. Again, these are the people who are creating a problem for us.

No one can say that in a year hence butter will continue to be a sink product. It may jump. We are not prepared for that. We have a certain limited number of creameries with diversified milk products. We have four, five or at the most, six. The whole south of Ireland is strewn with small separating stations whose only function is to make butter, and sometimes the butter is of a mediocre quality. They do not have to worry about its sale because it is sold anonymously under a code number. That is not the kind of dairying industry which leads to anything like good development. We should at least think in terms of federating these small creameries into groups, and setting up in the centre some manufacturing unit which would have equipment and personnel. That is the only way we can survive. We must diversify all milk production if we are to make the dairying industry anything like an economic or sound business proposition.

I was about to refer to the fattening units. I would not be too keen on huge fattening units because some of the very large units are very vulnerable. They are vulnerable in that an outbreak of swine fever would wipe out the lot. It is far better to have more moderate sized units which would not be exposed to that risk. It is a well-known fact that the higher the pig population the higher the incidence of disease. There are all kinds of freak diseases which may occur in a high pig population. Some of them cannot be identified. Freakish things can happen with huge pig concentration. There is the ever present problem of erysipelas.

I have never thought of using these fattening units for the purpose of turning out huge numbers of pigs. These fattening units attached to creameries and co-ops should have a very different function, associated with the pig breeding scheme. Boars should be kept in the units and progeny tested. The good boars should be retained and the ones which fail to meet the required standard should be eliminated. All pig production should be associated with the production of the right kind of store. If a farmer does not want to feed a store himself he should pass it on to the fattening unit and the unit should keep records of the progeny of the boars which are retained. We could very easily have a useful pig industry, and improve it in a much simpler way than we are doing with the kind of pig breeding we have now.

I am sure there are many members of the House listening to me who have been associated with county committees of agriculture. All the committees of agriculture are alike. They have the same agenda and the same monotonous ritual. The first item on the agenda is always the obituary list of boars who died for the cause. I have never attended a meeting of a committee of agriculture, in all the time I have been associated with them, at which the first item on the agenda was not the obituary list. One member gets up and says that he proposes that Jim Murphy's boar be replaced. He is asked was there a certificate, and he says that it was duly certified as having passed on peacefully. The motion is carried and the boar is replaced. That is the kind of "shot in the dark" breeding we have.

It is about time we had a bit of commonsense and got down seriously to the job. I gather that as boars get older their tusks grow longer and they become more aggressive. The farmer's wife becomes afraid of the animal because sometimes it charges at her and her husband is away. Anyone who has been associated with a county committee of agriculture must be amazed at the animal obituary list which goes on month after month and year after year, one casualty after another casualty. No one seems to care what the animal died of: whether it was something congenital or something that he had passed down the line.

I want to deal now with housing. Deputy Dillon spoke about the number of old, obsolete, poor farmhouses there are all over the country. Probably we have the greatest animal slum problem in the world. Do Deputies realise the types of shacks in which animals are housed in quite a number of instances and, indeed, in some of the larger holdings? A colossal amount of money is spent—I do not know what the cumulative figure is— on the replacement of farm buildings. Here again we have more or less fallen down on the problem. Some of the houses which were built were obsolete before they were erected and grants have been paid for them on the basic that they were better than the original buildings. That should not be. It is a form of planning in which the professional people are not interested. Seven per cent. on a cow-house does not yield a high income but seven per cent. on a £6,000 bungalow yields a lot. Farmyard planning is one form of planning that has been very much neglected. It is a very vital factor in our economic development. Planning means a saving of labour. It means efficiency in the job. It means shorter hours for the person engaged in doing a job. That can be achieved by having the right type of house placed in the right position.

Then, again, I often wonder about the way we treat animals. I regard the farmyard as a kind of social unit. There is a very distinctive pattern about everything in a farmyard. First of all, there is the question of the right type of house and the happiness of the inmates. It is very much a human problem, even in the animal world. One finds that overcrowding leads to the same kinds of problems in the animal world as in the human world.

In the farmyard, there are the bully and the bullied. If one goes into a fowlhouse and looks at the perches and the roosts one invariably finds that there is a space on either side of one perch. There is the bully. There is the one that dominates and bullies all the others. You have it in the farmhouse. All underdeveloped animals are not congenitally so. They are often the victims of the bully. What we call the runt pig is bound to be like that. Go into the farmhouse and see what happens. The bully is there. He bites the other animal's ear until he flees screaming into a corner. Go to the feeding trough. There you have the fellow with the horn who is able to get all the others out of his way. Go among the dairy herd and there you will find the bully again, the old lady in front who stands in the gap and seems to say: "Is there anyone who will dare to pass?" She goes to the self-feeding silo bed and stays there until she chooses to leave. She goes to the drinking trough and it is the same kind of thing all over again. These are all what I would call the social problems in the farmyard.

Mr. Tully

The Minister will have to bring in an Animals' Social Welfare Bill.

Mr. Moher

The whole question involves very intricate study. Then take the people who do not bother to make a study of the animals from which they make their living. Take, for instance, the farmer who would go down into his piggery and drag out a one-cwt. pig and slaughter it in the vicinity of the place. Imagine how that will dismay the happiness and order of the whole place. Imagine the effect of the screams of an animal in agony, which is being slaughtered, on the other inmates of the farmyard. These are all problems associated with good housing.

We know very well what the tendencies are in the modern world. They are to house animals separately, to stall them, to stall sows. That is solving the problem. Just think of the old sow who pushes out the door and rampages through the yard and pushes every door before her and who finally gets into a neighbour's place. She is now controlled. She is stalled. All these are factors which good planning and good housing solve. I do not think I should pursue the matter any further.

Mr. Tully

Is the Deputy sure he would not be able to struggle along until 7 o'clock?

Mr. Clinton

Every Deputy will agree with me that Deputy Moher, apart from the farmyard scene which he has just created for us, made a very strong case for everything that Deputy Dillon has, over the years, been advocating from this side of the House.

Mr. Dillon

Hear, hear.

Mr. Clinton

He is dissatisfied, as far as I can gather, with almost every aspect of our agricultural scene. He brings forward all the evidence that one needs—outside evidence in some cases—to prove that our grassland is as bad as it could be under an Irish sky. He proceeds from there to tell us that he cannot understand why the amount of land under the potato crop has diminished: it has diminished in volume by about 13 per cent. in 1961.

Deputy Moher cannot understand why our farmers have not been educated into producing better grass and doing a better job in conservation. These are all the difficulties that have been pointed out over the years. The reason given is that we have no advisory service. Although the remainder of Deputy Moher's speech was very entertaining, it would not make much impact on the general position of agriculture in the country.

Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted, and 20 Members being present,

Mr. Clinton

To get back again to the Estimate proper, there is not a great deal that is new that can be referred to at this stage because some Deputies on this side of the House have more or less exhausted the subject. Nevertheless, the Estimate for the Department of Agriculture is such an important one that it deserves the most careful and most critical consideration. Even in its underdeveloped condition agriculture is, and in my view will continue to be, the foundation of our entire economy.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.