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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 13 Nov 1963

Vol. 205 No. 10

Committee on Finance. - Vote 41—Agriculture (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion :—
"That the Vote be referred back for reconsideration."—(Deputy Donegan.)

When I reported progress last night, we had begun to discuss the situation in relation to grain. Everybody who knows anything about agriculture will agree that we want a high level of grain as well as a high cattle population, that one can run with the other, that the farm with a high level of grain can also have a high population of cattle, that you will not get a proportionate increase in the number of cattle that can be maintained in each year if you drop the grain acreage.

The grain acreage last year dropped, as a result, in my submission, of the bad management of the Minister for Agriculture, by 6.4 per cent. Worse than that, the highest priced grain that we in this country sell is wheat. It is high priced because, presumably, it is charged in to the industrial wage structure to produce a price for flour for home consumption. There was a reduction of 26.3 per cent in the acreage in the wheat, or 82,700 acres.

Let us consider what Fianna Fáil said about a similar reduction in wheat-growing in the days gone by. I quote from the front page of the Sunday Press of 23rd October, 1955, when the late Deputy Tom Walsh produced an article which got banner headlines: “Wheat, beet, potatoes incentive has gone. The drop in wheat production of 100,000 tons in last year represents a loss of about £2,800,000 to wheat growers.” The present position is that we have a greater drop than that. It is logical for me to say now to the Minister of Agriculture that the incentive is gone and that there has been a loss to the farmers of up to £3 million in respect of the reduction in the acreage of wheat. Let us add to that the fact that potatoes at the moment are virtually unsaleable. The position may have improved in the past few weeks but during the entire harvesting period, they have sold at not as much as would provide the cost of harvesting much less the high cost of sowing, spraying and generally maintaining the crop in the ground.

If I say the Minister for Agriculture is responsible for this reduction, it is only fair that I should give my reasoning.Before the 1962 harvest, the Minister lauded the fact that there had been discussion, and to some extent agreement, with the millers in relation to wheat and between the millers and the farmers' organisations. While they did get together and while they did set up the Central Cereal Laboratory, I want to make it quite clear that the responsibility still devolves on the Minister for Agriculture to see to it that the wheat farmer or producer of any sort of agricultural produce gets the highest price possible for the greatest amount of his goods.

I submit that the Minister in doing as he did and said he would do, wiping his hands completely of this issue, created the situation in the harvest of 1962 where the results of this Central Cereal Laboratory were followed strictly and rigidly with too high a rejection rate in 1962. I do not submit that the wheat grown in 1962 was 100 per cent fit for milling but I do submit that a greater proportion could have been used for flour. As a result, the low price that pertained, even though the Government did give some little help, meant that the farmer was so disappointed with what he received that he sowed 82,700 acres less at a loss of about £25 an acre. If we take the old rule of thumb measure of one ton to a statute acre and the price at £3 a barrel, it means a loss of about £25 an acre. The Minister, in wiping his hands of the whole operation, left the farmer in the position that he reduced his sowing of high-priced grain by 82,700 acres or 26.3 per cent.

The Minister had an agreement in relation to grain whereby he gave to a particular group the right to import all the offals free of any binding clause and also to import 180,000 tons of coarse grain. In return, they undertook to take up the barley crop. All that is passed now and I do not propose to go into the rights or wrongs, but it is wrong that this situation should exist as it did. It was only the views of people who matter in the agricultural industry that caused the Minister to change the position this year. When he did change it, he created a situation in which An Board Gráin are charged with the taking over of the barley crop but what will happen on 1st January is that they will not get that much of it because a great measure will by then be taken over by other interests. Pollard imports and wheat offal imports mounted to an extraordinary degree in the past three months.

The Minister had not placed restrictions on the import of Russian offals up to 31st March next and as a result of inordinate importation, the price of Irish pollard has fallen. I know the idea is that the farmer is entitled to get his feeding stuffs at world prices but I deliberately use the words "inordinate imports" at low prices in this connection. This is the reason the price of Irish flour has increased and the price of Irish offals has decreased.

It was a Fianna Fáil Government who, in 1953, set up an inter-departmental committee that produced a figure of 300,000 tons of Irish wheat to be grown each year. Due to the mismanagement of the Minister and the Government, that figure has now fallen to 265,000 tons and the slipshod methods of the Minister over the past few years have resulted in a situation in which that figure could be further reduced. Our policy here is to use the maximum quantity of Irish wheat and it will be the policy of the Fine Gael Government, when they attain office, to make every effort to see that the maximum quantity of Irish wheat is included in the grist.

To say that we should have a 100 per cent Irish wheat loaf is saying something that is wrong because we have good years and bad years, but when you reduce the quantity of Irish wheat in the loaf below 75 per cent, it should be possible also to drop your quality standards and allow the Irish farmer to benefit from increased industrial wages and to sell his produce at a price which will be charged to the Irish consumer in the price of the loaf.

We believe that there is a necessity for a relatively small sum in subsidisation of the transport of barley from places such as East Cork, where they have a surplus, to the feeding areas in the west of Ireland and in Monaghan and Cavan, so that the farmer in these areas will not have to pay too high a price for his compound feeding stuffs. The Minister, in not facing up to that matter, has let down the farmers and a change would not be out of place.

The position in relation to horticultural products has come to the fore over the past 12 or 18 months. In this connection, one must immediately consider the efforts of Lt.-General Costello to process Irish vegetables by the accelerated freeze dry system and to market them in Britain and on overseas markets. There is a feeling growing up in the country over the past few months that things are not going as they should go and that the grandiose statements made up to that time have had a brake put on them as far as the Government are concerned.

It has come to the point that we had in the Farmers' Journal of 19th October a cartoon by that very clever artist, Warner, in which we had vege-table factories being put up as a poster show on the right and another poster being put up across that by a person very like the Minister. In another corner, there is a person carrying something very like a crozier and in another corner we have a person like Lt.-General Costello smoking his pipe as usual and smiling at the whole business.

We want to know what the Government intend to do about these factories and we want to know why a grant was refused to the Glencolumbkille Co-operative in County Donegal. What was the speech made by a member of the Hierarchy as a result of which there were consultations with the Taoiseach and the Minister as a further result of which a certain undertaking was given? Is it true that a grant has been given for the setting up of a small, one-unit, experimental factory which will not use Irish vegetables? If that is so, what is the purpose of the whole operation?

We do not know on this side of the House, but we know this much, that the quota figure for the amount of labour on the farm is seven hours in relation to those projects for every hour in the factory. A figure has been mentioned also of 240 people employed in each factory. We know that the figures in relation to the expenditure involved when presented in the public press compare far better than with some of the industrial efforts—I should say solely industrial efforts—using no farm produce that is available in large quantity in this country and produced by Irish hands—which have the enthusiastic support of the Government.

There is also in relation to these horticultural products the fact that we on the east coast are right opposite the north-western ports of Britain. We have Manchester, Liverpool, Bradford and all those cities where there is a standing market for fresh vegetables. In Drogheda town during the last winter, an ordinary citizen who happened to have a contact through marriage in Manchester exported in containers sizeable quantities of vegetables—carrots, parsnips, and even cabbage—to those markets, and paid higher prices to the farmers than had been obtaining up to that time.

Within three miles of where I live, there is a Dutchman who every day at six o'clock in the morning rings up the various markets in Manchester, Belfast and even in Dublin. Before 10 o'clock, his lorry has left for where the best prices are. He can sell his carrots, his brussels sprouts, his celery and his parsnips and other vegetables at enhanced prices, live well and have a figure of between 50 and 100 acres in this production and a higher level of employment per acre than I have seen anywhere else in the country. If this is possible, I asked the Minister if he was wide awake as to the cost of transferring from eastern ports here to the north west of Britain this sort of vegetable but I could not be answered. The packing was so different and there were all those variations so that he could not indicate the cost of transfer.

The complaint at the moment is that there is too high a cost of transport. If the Minister wants a figure, I will quote as high as £7 a ton for some of these commodities. I want to ask the Minister if there is an answer to that, whether there should be an effort to have some service, perhaps subsidised in the initial years, to give a volume of goods which would mean a reduced cost of transport and a market for our farmers which is not now available to them. These are things which perhaps should be done and are not being done.

I asked the Minister on Tuesday, 12th November, what capital was invested in the past five years by commercial interests and co-operative societies in undertakings to process, pack or market agricultural products. The answer he gave me was that the information requested was not available.I wonder if I asked the same sort of question of the Minister for Industry and Commerce or the Taoiseach in respect of purely industrial undertakings, would they say that that information was not available? I submit it would be readily available. The Minister has now alerted his Department as to the awareness they should have of these developments and the necessity for them. Does the world not know that more and more goods are being bought in a package and that the name on the outside signifies the standard of quality? When I began my remarks last evening, I said that constancy of supply and certainly of quality was the keynote of agricultural production. What effort is the Minister making to have this done?

The small farms of the west have been the subject of reports, but there are small farms everywhere. These horticultural products are commodities that could help wonderfully there. There are other things that could be a help. I had hoped the Minister would make his contribution this year as a result of the report produced on the small western farms and that he would have something to say about them, but he had nothing of any consequence that I could see. There were things that could have been done. One of them was something that was announced before the last inter-Party Government left office, which was legislation that we would have passed to enable small farmers who had a charge on their holdings which had been defunct or not claimed for a certain number of years to remove those charges without great legal cost, so placing them in the position of being able to go to the bank manager or to the Agricultural Credit Corporation to get a small loan. Those financial interests are not interested in a second charge because a second charge interferes with their opportunities to collect. We know that the vast amount of capital that has to be injected into agriculture will bear hardest on those in the small farms. If the Minister had announced this policy which we had decided to provide and had put it into practice, he could have helped.

If he had said that he was prepared to set up, as has happened in two places in this country already, communal pig-fattening stations from which sows of good quality could be given out to small farmers who could feed them and get them to farrow and sell back the bonhams to those communal stations at a fixed price per lb., it would have been a great help. In one instance that I know of, you can get a sow for £35 and when she has farrowed, you can come back with the bonham and get 2/- a lb. A good bonham is 50 lbs. weight so you are guaranteed a minimum of £5 per bonham. That can be continued on the second and third farrowing and you can find out if she is going to have a large number of bonhams in each litter or not, of the right sort or not, and as you must bring back the sow then, there can be culling. The bad one can be pushed aside and the good one used again, and as the mating is done with boars that are available at the communal pig-fattening stations and they are proven stock, you will get your pig quality up and the small farmer can earn good money by doing a job that cannot be done well in a big unit. There is only one big unit I know of in the British Isles where they farrow all their own sows, that is, McGuckians of Cloughmills. All the others like Jordans of Lisburn let their sows out to have them farrowed where individual attention could be given to them on small farms.

If the Minister had only said that he would do this in the west and that there would be perhaps increased grants in respect of housing for those sows, he could have done something. If he had said that he would free those holdings from the old charge of 10/- a week for the sister in America who never had claimed for 20 years, and would so allow the people to have some borrowing power, he could have done something. These are the things the Minister has not said he will do.

It is also quite true that as far as the small farmers are concerned, two businesses set up by the Leader of the Opposition when he was Minister for Agriculture, namely Eggsports and the five county co-operative which he set up for the marketing of poultry flesh, are two of the main ways in which he could give a contribution towards easing the lot of the small farmer. The small farmer who produces turkeys finds that there is a glut at Christmas. There must be somebody who could take his birds, regulate the supply, put them in cold storage and market them over a period. That is a simple thing. It is being done in malting barley and various agricultural commodities. He could be paid a minimum figure and get the balance when his goods have been marketed over a period. It is only in this way that you will get a constant balanced production. The Minister does not seem to feel that there is anything there. He has not indicated that an extension of the dairying system to the west of Ireland is contemplated by him. It is absolutely necessary to give those people a cash crop. The cash products that could assist would be the farrowing of sows from fattening stations, the production of poultry through a communal selling agency, which would give extra profits, and an extension of the dairying system, so that they could have their monthly big cheque. All this could help, but we have not got it.

We have a reduction in the number of pigs. Comparing our pig population of 1,094,500 with that of the European countries, we must admit that ours is a pretty miserable figure. The day is gone of the pig in the cot beside the cottage. The profit on rearing a pig varies from 30/- to £2. I do not know anybody who wants to feed two or three pigs over three or three and a half months for 30/- or £2. That does not pay. It is just as easy to feed 40, 50 or 100 pigs.

While grants are available, there does not seem to be the necessary drive for an extension of pig breeding and fattening. For instance, nobody has pointed out that the Jordan type of pig house is so much cheaper in capital outlay and feeding cost than anything else. No grants have been given for those. The capital cost is given as £4 per pig, whereas the Danes pay up to £28 and the Solari unit runs as high as £18.

Let us get down to the basic points of policy on which we differ from the Government. The report of the bacon industry survey recommended a levy of 5/- per pig over the next two and a half years. This money is to be used to compensate the owners of uneconomic bacon factories that have to go out of production. We have stated our mind openly on this proposal. We reject it, and if we become the Government of this country, we will not implement it. I have never heard silence speak so loud as it has from the Government side. I want the Minister to say if the Government will extract this levy of 5/- per pig.

We have grants and loans for bacon factories. We intend to extend them, but the person who receives them must naturally be responsible for their repayment.A factory owner will not take a grant or loan for a factory that is fading out. If we can get our pig production up, these people will take grant and loans in respect of viable units. If they are not viable, let us forget about them. They should not be a charge on the farmer. Surely it is not the farmer's business to compensate a businessman with a bad unit of production? We have said quite clearly we will not implement this recommendation; the Government have said nothing.

There is another proposal whereby the Pigs and Bacon Commission would buy all the pigs. We have no objection to this, but we think it would be a mistake and an interruption of free trade if pig dealers were to be excluded from getting a little more. My own experience is that the pig dealer can often give more than you would get for a grade A pig going to the factory. The reason is obvious. Our pork trade with Britain has improved year by year and pigs for pork very often make more than pigs for bacon. I do not like the situation whereby the big business man will pay the minimum for all the pigs. It is clear to anyone who ever saw a pig being graded that the fat difference between grade A and a lower grade is the breadth of one's nail. When you come to grade a pig, in many cases it is the difference between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The pig dealer has a place in this operation. If he brings 100 pigs to the factory gate and the factory needs them, they get the maximum gradings and he earns his profit because he is getting a higher price for the farmer than the farmer could get himself. That has been the experience of all our pig producers. I have asked large and small producers what has happened.Once, they send to the factory and twice they sell to dealers. It would be a mistake if this element of competition were removed from the trade. Fine Gael have no objection to stating their policy on the matter. We feel there should be a continuance of the dealer system as well as the present proposal that the Pigs and Bacon Commission buy all the pigs and that they be directed towards the various factories.

Removing the L grade of pigs for those who go to bacon factories was a mistake. This is the third time the Government have interfered with the guaranteed price of pigs and while it would be quite impossible in public debate to go into the niceties of this, I am well aware that so far as pigs produced for grading are concerned, this meant on every occasion a reduction in the price the farmer could get for pigs.

We have had talk in Britain in the last few weeks: we had our quota of bacon fixed and it seems as if the rationalisation of purchases of agricultural produce on the British market which was done in the case of butter is now being extended to bacon. I suggest the present system of grading should be reviewed with a view to improving the lot of the farmer. We all want better grade pigs but over the past six months fat pigs have been making as much as lean pigs. A cartoon, also by Warner, in the Farmers' Journal another week, gave a pretty ludicrous idea of the situation. It showed the great, fat pigs smoking cigars and walking into the factories at the same price as the lean ones. The statistics of pig production show what happened. The number of pigs produced, comparing the 12 months up to the end of September in both cases, in 1961, for fresh pork and suasages, was 138,201. In 1962, we had improved to 261,136; in 1963, we were not running as good an average, with 249,399. It is still about 20 per cent of the number of pigs being produced for bacon.

We all know why. We have a preferential system as far as the veterinary regulations are concerned in Britain because of our complete freedom from disease and our island situation. This is something we should exploit to the maximum. So far as I know, we have about 95 per cent of the pork trade into Britain. I hope Britain will continue to eat more and more pork and my information is that such a trend is there and if so, it will help us considerably.

I think the arrangement made in relation to bacon will improve matters because the dumping of food on the British market had to end and it seems as if Britain has faced that situation and, through GATT, has decided in respect of all products as well as milk products, she must have this rationalisation. I propose to examine almost immediately the situation in regard to milk products and the increase in prices that came in respect of butter as a result of this rationalisation which was viewed by us in Ireland as perhaps not a good thing at the start. It was spectacular and it was quite a tremendous price increase. If we get an increase in the price of bacon in Britain, we are on to a good thing. But the numbers of pigs have dropped and the hopes of our farmers have not been encouraged.

The advisory services that could have led him to proper production and housing of pigs and the grants and the loans—surely he is entitled to his share of the National Loan as it fills, just as every other section of the community is, for productive purposes—have not been provided. Perhaps they are, on paper, but the volume of money going to them is not sufficient to have created this upsurge in the pig population which is needed. In view of our special situation in regard to pork and the present trend in British policy as regards, agricultural produce from abroad, the Minister should indicate that there should be a great increase in the number of pigs here and, through his advisory services, set about the injection of capital by loan and grant to achieve that aim.

Last night, the Minister interrupted me in regard to the price paid for milk when I had indicated the prices paid in the various countries in Europe. I had said that I quoted from the Government publication, The European Economic Community, laid before both House of the Oireachtas on 13th June, 1961. In fact, I was a halfpenny out. The Minister's interruption was to the effect that skimmed milk had not been taken into account. I can now tell the Minister it was and if he wants any confirmation of these prices, I advise him that there seems to be no difference at all except perhaps a halfpenny here and there between the figures produced by the Government in 1961 and the figures produced by Mr. Raymond Crotty, the economist, who did the survey of our dairying industry for the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association. They agree almost completely, apart from this odd halfpenny which led me astray. I do not think the Minister can make much point of the halfpenny. We accept that our price for milk is the lowest in Europe.

This brings me to perhaps one of the most important items that Fine Gael have considered in relation to this Agricultural Estimate, the price of milk. I dealt with the Minister's scheme for the subsidisation and the increase of heifer numbers in herds. Therefore, it is not proper for me to go over it again, except to say we regard it as a very small contribution, albeit a contribution, towards increasing our cattle numbers. But over the past month and before that, the Fine Gael Front Bench have considered the change in the situation as regards marketing butter abroad. I put down Parliamentary Question No. 18 on Wednesday, 30th October, to ascertain from the Minister for Agriculture the current prices obtainable in the British market for Irish butter and the comparative average prices for each one of the past five years. We find that in 1958 the price you could get for butter in Britain was 218/4d per cwt. and, in the Six Counties, where we always enjoyed a premium, 256/4d per cwt. But in 1963, up to 31st August we were getting 340/- per cwt. in Britain and 351/11 per cwt. in Northern Ireland.

Although this is true, if I were to quote the Farm Bulletin, September issue, on the subsidies that are estimated for butter and milk production in this year, it is found that the estimated figure of £6,418,000 is by far the highest yet. It must be remembered— and in this publication it is not adverted to—that we received a figure of 12,600 tons of butter as our quota for Britain and that we then received, because of a shortage of butter in Britain, an extra 5,000 tons which will virtually remove all our butter in cold storage. That brings us to the position of exporting far more butter to Britain this year and therefore bearing far greater losses than average production over the years would carry. Production this year is estimated to increase by only 10,000 cwt. from a figure of creamery butter at 985,000 cwt. to 995,000 cwt. as indicated in reply to a question by me on Wednesday, 6th November.

We have therefore reached this decision in Fine Gael, that we were right when we opposed—I was not here at the time—the Dairy Produce Marketing Bill, 1961, on the Second Reading, and that when Fine Gael put down amendments in the Seanad in an attempt to remove the obnoxious provision in a section of that Bill whereby the farmers had to pay one-third of the losses on all exports of creamery produce, we were also right. Having examined the figures and the improvement of 122/- per cwt., on the average, in prices and the fact that the loss— the price at which An Bord Bainne takes up butter is 469/- —is now less than half, we have decided to make this statement on behalf of the Fine Gael Party: that if we are elected now or at any future time and if the situation is then the same in relation to these prices, whether they be the same prices or prices in the same ratio, we will immediately remove the levy of one and three-eighths of a penny and thereby increase the price to the farmers by that amount. This levy was put on in two slices by the present Administration.

We believe this is the best way to get our cattle population up to the figure of two million which was the policy adumbrated by the last inter-Party Government and should be done as our first aim for agriculture. That price undertaking stands. It has been passed by the Front Bench of the Fine Gael Party and will be implemented. We want every farmer to know that we think this is the best way to get an increase in cattle numbers. We believe our farmers are entitled to a fair share just as their counterparts are in the rest of Europe. We believe the British policy at present of rationalisation in relation to agricultural exports will see to it that this will occur.

I mentioned briefly last night the success of "Kerrygold". Over the years, we have been telling you to put a brand name on your butter. You had, first of all, an investigatory committee. Then you had an advisory team, and the devil and all, but you never put a brand name on your butter. When you did put "Kerrygold" on it, inside months you were getting a premium of £22 per ton. I know the cost of advertising was probably half that sum, but I regard that half as something to be regarded as a capital investment for the future and not as something to be charged against each lot of butter going out.

The Deputy, I think, covered that point last night.

There is a reduction of almost 350,000 in the herds in Europe. This indicates that the milking of cows, which is a seven-day job— we have not yet got a five-day cow— is moving away from the affluent countries. Here we have a labour force ready and willing, if paid, to do the job. Here we have the opportunity of cashing in. It is our ambition to see that done.

The Minister produced a figure of £380,000 profits as a result of the increase in the price of butter since he first introduced the levy. That indicates that our reasoning is correct. We have no worries at all about this decision and we are prepared to implement it. If we get this increase in the cattle industry, a vast sum will be necessary for the industry itself. The Minister did not advert to this. At the present moment there are losses on cheese, chocolate crumb and milk powder. A very small amount of our production is going into these products. These processes have not been rationalised as British butter has been rationalised through GATT. There is need for diversification because, having rationalised butter, they will proceed to rationalise other products. We will have to turn more and more of our milk into cheese and chocolate crumb, which may seem illogical as losses mount, but, at the same time, diversification is necessary. We must look ahead to the time when we will get into the Common Market and these will be highly profitable occupations.

There are two directions in which vast sums will have to be expended, namely, in the creameries, for the proper processing of the product, and on the farms. There is no standard cowhouse. Many are built where there is not a plentiful supply of water. Farmers will have to be given the opportunity of producing high quality milk in hygienic manner. If water is not available, there will have to be a freeze unit and electricity. We are prepared to go the whole way on this. We are extremely doubtful that the present Government would go with us.

The Taoiseach has indicated that he expects us to be in the Common Market by 1970. By 1967, there will be a dearth of 380,000 tons of beef in the Common Market. Is it not good business to bring our cattle population up? No tuppenny-ha'penny scheme, such as the Minister has announced, will do the job. We believe our proposition is the correct way in which to approach the situation.

The 1961 volume produced by the Government gives interesting figures in relation to various agricultural products in relation to our joining the Common Market. By 1967-68, the Common Market partners hope to have 83 per cent of their requirements of wheat, 87 per cent of their requirements of barley, 69 per cent of their requirements of sugar and 89 per cent of their requirements of butter. They seem to be plentifully supplied with cheese and pork. While everything will not go as smoothly as the Taoiseach often suggests, it has to be remembered that this will be itself a free trade area but, as far as anybody else is concerned, it will be a highly restricted area. It will have its troubles and its difficulties. Nevertheless we must move towards it. We must take a chance. Irish agriculture cannot wait to make every decision that is completely right. There will have to be a crash policy, a policy that will make an odd mistake, but, if it makes an odd one, it will make many that will be right. We must bring up our 12 million acres of arable land to a state at which they can support a decent number of people with a decent standard of living.

I cannot understand the reduction in the number of sheep. It is small— 0.8 per cent. Our lamb trade has been good and sheep require less capital per acre than cattle do. I do not know how this drop occurred. Very soon I believe we shall have to get around to grading lamb carcases by size. I do not know if the business interests handling them are getting around to that. Other exporting countries are grading their lamb and using a trade name. Either by number or name, the housewife is assured that into her oven will go lamb of good quality. I know there are many different sizes of lamb and many different varieties— Galway lamb, Crossbred lamb and, the best of all, Scotch lamb. Some sizes are suitable for restaurants and hotels, some for small families. Grading will require some promotional work. If the Minister sees to it that grants are readily available, and availed of, and if we grade, then we are bound to improve our lamb trade.

In the Agricultural Institute at the moment, there are two people engaged on sheep breeding. The Minister will say that this is not a matter for him, that there is a board, and a chairman, and all the rest of it. I am very keen on horticultural production, but it seems odd to me that there should be two people looking after such an important facet of the industry as sheep, remembering we have a sheep population of 4,634,300, while there are 11 or 12 people with degrees looking after horticulture. That seems to me to be wrong, because a lot can be done in the matter of sheep-breeding.I do not wish to criticise the Agricultural Institute, but this is something that bears looking into.

The Minister covered his Supplementary Estimate in his statement and I have touched on various points relating to it. I am delighted to see it includes a grant-in-aid to the National Farmers Association towards the expenses of the world congress held in this country. I am pleased to see he feels more money is needed for lime and fertiliser subsidies, pleased also to see such things as the contribution towards administrative costs in respect of the Irish national project in Tanganyika. I have dealt with the situation in relation to extra money needed towards butter exports.

There is a figure of £330,000 for the erection of commercial grain storage facilities. It is the first step forward since the Leader of this Party instituted the Grain Storage (Loans) Act in 1961. It would be churlish of me to offer criticism of that provision at this stage: I availed of a couple of grants myself and perhaps I should keep my mouth shut. However, we need to consider which was the better system—the provision of capital over a long period in loans directly serviced from national funds or the dishing out in a hurried fashion of these grants at the rate of 35/- per ton. It created 195,000 tons of extra storage, but it was a rushed business over a short period. It was a right good thing but I put it to the Minister that he should now look at the situation and consider the various people left behind who could not get their legal situation in relation to premises fixed up.

Most of all in these things, the Minister should consider the farmer because any farmer producing a volume of grain should have a drier of his own. I am not suggesting he should have a drier to cater for all his grain, but I suggest he needs some sort of insurance policy, some sort of small drier whenever grain which has a certain moisture content will not stand. If the farmer is of the opinion that wheat of a certain moisture content is submitted, there is a scare and millers believe all wheat has gone bad. That is why the farmer needs his insurance policy, his small drier to cater for a small volume of grain, so that he can hold it without deterioration. I would be foolish to suggest he should have a large drier because the capital involved would hardly warrant it, but he does need that insurance policy, and for that reason there is a need for specific loans for storage and drying.

In general, I should like to say that no sops to gain votes, handed out here or outside the House, will be of much use to the agricultural industry. What is needed is a progressive outlook, better selling methods. The extension of credit will lead our farmers to a stage at which we shall have a constancy of supply. The strongest foundation for these things is a belief in agriculture, a conviction that it is a good thing to support agriculture, that we can have more people profitably employed on the land. This can be done through an integration of our advisory services with an extension of credit.

We on this side of the House are prepared to meet that bill. Without going into all details of the bill, I should like to give a few of the points that immediately come to mind. If we are to have a population of two million cows, in round figures that means an increase of 500,000. To produce or buy that extra number, at £50 per head, gives a figure of £25 million. If we are to have a population of two million pigs—and that should be our target—we must produce an extra million pigs which, at an average price of £8 each, would require £8 million. If we are to house the extra 500,000 cows, I believe it will cost £20 each if we are to provide proper housing for them, with all the necessary facilities for the production of clean milk. That would mean an extra expenditure of £10 million. If we are to house the extra pigs, even if we do it by Jordan pighouses, when we have availed of all grants, it will cost another £4 million.If we are to carry these extra cows, we will have to improve our grasslands.

The potential is there, the mine is there to be tapped. Taking the figure of nine million acres of grassland in the country—it is small in proportion to the 12 million acres of arable land only one million acres of which are devoted to tillage—I suggest a figure of £3 an acre, which comes to £27 million. Then we come to the rationalisation of our dairy processing industry and must consider the produce of the extra 500,000 cows, so we must improve the processing methods and completely rationalise our creameries. I put that at a figure of somewhere in the order of £10 million.

In all this, I have taken the bare fundamentals and we get a figure of £84 million. Adding items I have not mentioned, and without going into the major ones, certainly in order to bring the agricultural industry to a stage where it will prosper and provide a good standard of living for those who work in it, we will need an extra expenditure in the region of £100 million in the next five years. However, we must remember that we are investing in a capital asset which, if we take machinery, housing, arable land and all the rest of it, is valued at something like £1,000 million, so the figure I suggest in extra expenditure is only about ten per cent. The methods of providing that money are the commercial banks, the Agricultural Credit Company, recourse to below-the-line expenditure by grant and loan from the Exchequer. We on this side of the House, as we have indicated, are prepared to meet this. We doubt if the Government are, and we shall welcome the day when we are given the opportunity of completing a very hard task but one in which we will be strengthened by a belief in the land of this country.

I have listened for a reasonable time to the man who, we believe, is the projected Fine Gael Minister for Agriculture, if and when that Party ever succeed in forming a Government. It is a fairly big "if". However, Deputy Donegan did speak to us as a Front Bench Fine Gael man on agriculture and I must concede that the long speech he made did require a great deal of research, concentration and hard work on his part. His speech, however, showed that there appears to be a complete absence of constructive ideas on agriculture in the Fine Gael Party.

Deputy Donegan in all the things he has said did not say anything we have not heard in this House for 20 years or more. Deputy Donegan is a very generous man and for that reason I was very surprised to hear him describe the heifer scheme announced by the Minister as a tuppence-half-penny scheme. It may be that he did not wish to let down the Leader of the Fine Gael Party who criticised this great scheme on which I congratulate the Minister and his Department.

The Leader of the Opposition saw fit to jeer publicly at this scheme in the cheaper Sunday papers that revel in the kind of criticism that appeals to people of low intelligence. The Leader of the Fine Gael Party jeeringly said that it was a hare-brained scheme and that the cows of the country would have to start producing triplets if the target laid down by the Government in the Second Programme for Economic Expansion were to be achieved.

The arithmetic of the plan laid down by the Government for cattle expansion was simple enough. It is plain enough even for the Fine Gael Party with their very few farmer members. When it is considered that we have about half a million heifers annually in this country between one and two years old, it is easy to see that, if the major portion of these heifers are put to breeding, after the passage of a couple of years, the target we have set ourselves will be achieved with ease.

I might mention in passing that at a committee of agriculture meeting in Kilkenny last Monday our chief agricultural officer was asked some specific questions about this cattle expansion programme. He said publicly that without any difficulty at all the annual increase figure laid down by the Government plan could easily be achieved in our county and I have no doubt at all that it will be achieved over the country as a whole. It is a very attractive scheme. The £15 a head bonus on every new heifer coming to farmers' herds will mean that no potential breeding stock will be wasted. Deputy Donegan implied last night — it sounded odd coming from a Fine Gael Deputy, especially a Fine Gael Front Bench Deputy — that this was a rancher's scheme, that it was only the larger farmer or the man in a position to buy fairly big numbers of heifers and collect the £15 bounty who could avail of this scheme. If they stopped to think a minute or two, it would surely be plain enough to the Fine Gael Party and to everybody else who would have doubts in this regard that from the day the £15 bounty was announced, every heifer became considerably more valuable. If this precious rancher, as he is described by Deputy Donegan, is to go out and stock his land with breeding heifers, it will certainly create a big stir in the heifer market and obviously the man from whom he will buy his stock will more than likely be the small dairy man. If that dairy man decides not to keep his heifers, he can sell them at a very much increased price. The benefits of this scheme will reach right down to the very smallest herd in the country.

The Minister introduced into this House and made available to the coun try some years ago a fertiliser scheme, a scheme that did more good for agriculture than most other schemes that have come up since then. This new heifer scheme is in the same category. It shows the Government have imagination.It shows the Government have a realisation of the needs of the country and are prepared to do something about it and to put worthwhile schemes like this into operation.

I have never stood up in this House very much to congratulate Ministers about anything in particular. I always feel that coming from the Minister's Party, it sounds a bit stupid, that it sounds as if a Deputy is going out of his way to please. However, I can say with great conviction that I believe this to be a very sound scheme and, whatever criticism the Opposition may make and however they may shout at us that we will fail, that we will not achieve our objective, I feel certain we will succeed. Speaking from these benches as a farmer, I realise the handicap that Fine Gael are under because they have practically no farmers over there at all.

A Deputy

That is wrong, and well the Deputy knows it.

Their direct contact with rural Ireland and with the farmers of Ireland is very tenuous. Even so, I would have thought they would have seen the value of this scheme, even by reading about it in the papers.

We will not put inspectors on the fences.

You had your pipsqueak as well.

That is a hoary old story and I must remind Deputy Coogan that I am not in the habit of interrupting any speaker here and I would ask him to refrain from helping me in his usual way.

The Deputy should not provoke it.

I wish to comment on the spectacular rise in the sheep population which has taken place since 1956. It has increased from less than 3,500,000 to a good deal more than 4,500,000 and the available lamb population has gone up by considerably more than 500,000 per annum. Bearing in mind that our share of the lamb market in Britain is about 4 per cent and also the amount of room there is for expansion in this branch of farming, it appears to me to contain more promise than a great many other agricultural enterprises, except possibly beef. This is a very satisfactory trend— in fact, a remarkable trend—and I would like to see every possible help given to sheep farmers, especially in regard to sheep diseases.

Anybody who will take a walk into the Dublin market or any other sheep sale in the country cannot help but notice there is considerable infestation in our flocks of sheep in the form of fluke and foot-rot. That must cost sheep owners in the country a considerable amount of money every year and I should like to see the Department providing sheep farmers with all the advice and help possible to correct that state of affairs.

Deputy Donegan referred to what he described as the serious situation with regard to wheat and he surprised me considerably because it appears from what he said that the Fine Gael policy as regards wheat growing has undergone a quite revolution. I can remember the time when the farmers were advised to spare their land the abuse of growing wheat and when the Leader of the Fine Gael Party, in his own inimitable manner, said that he would not be found dead in a field of wheat. Deputy Donegan complains that the acreage of wheat has shown a drop since last year. I come from what is practically the biggest wheatgrowing constituency in the country. There is more wheat grown in that constituency to the square mile than in any other constituency in the country.

I believe the wheat growers in my constituency are quite prepared to face facts and recognise that our problem is not a deficiency in the acreage of wheat but the very reverse. We realise that the country is able to meet its requirements of native wheat from a comparatively small acreage. It has been the policy of our Party to make wheatgrowing an attractive proposition.Within that condition of avoiding over-production, we have given farmers a very attractive price for their wheat.

Deputy Donegan referred to the 1962 harvest in particular and his version of what happened and mine are quite different. When we were discussing the Estimate for 1962 in July of that year, I expressed my anxiety and fear that the understanding that had been arrived at between the NFA and the Flour Millers Association was a cause for anxiety to the country. I felt it would lead to grave dissatisfaction and, as the event proved, what I said was an under-statement.

Briefly, what happened was this: the four principal organisations representing the farmers met early in 1962— these were the General Council of Committees of Agriculture, the Wheat Growers Association, the ICMSA and the NFA—and discussed the question of wheat standards. Each party agreed to meet again and also agreed that no party would negotiate with the Flour Millers Association until a common policy had been worked out and agreement reached between the four organisations. A short time afterwards, members of the three organisations other than the NFA saw in the papers that an agreement had been reached between the NFA and the Irish Flour Millers Association and that the agreement accepted the Hagberg test, accepted the colour standard and accepted the institution of an independent laboratory for the testing of disputed samples. That was that, as far as the wheat-producing farmers were concerned.

During the harvest of that year, the weather conditions were very unsatisfactory and a fairly big proportion of the grain was not up to the quality standard of other years. Samples as they went into the intake points were tested by the Hagberg method and a considerable number of them passed it. When the millers discovered that this was the case, without reference to the NFA or anybody else, they threw the Hagberg test overboard and instituted instead the maltose test. Samples that had passed the Hagberg test were retested and many of the samples that had passed the Hagberg test were shot down as a result. The NFA were left, like the bridegroom in Lochinvar, dangling their bonnets.

The utterly ruthless and unscrupulous behaviour of the millers in dealing with that harvest should not be forgotten and should not be let go without the utmost condemnation from anybody who represents a wheatgrowing constituency. I was looking at a discussion on Telefís Éireann about two weeks ago in which three parties took part. There were farmers' representatives, a Flour Millers Association man, Mr. Glynn from Co. Clare, and Dr. Spillane from the Kinsealy Laboratory. Dr. Spillane, without any reservation or qualification, said that the Hagberg test was a far better one. What the flour millers are after when they apply these tests is to ascertain the activity of alfa amylase in the wheat. Dr. Spillane, who probably knows more about this subject than anyone else and certainly more about it than the flour millers, who is a scientist with no axe to grind, said that the maltose test which the millers used in 1962 was most unreliable and that the Hagberg test was better than the maltose test and far less subject to error.

The Agricultural Institute found that of the rejected samples of the 1962 wheat more than half should have been accepted as millable. The only thing that the maltose test did show of itself was that it is completely unreliable.I think the wheat farmers of this country are well able to face facts. These facts have not been any too pleasant in the past few years due to the weather conditions. The wheat farmers are well able to take their medicine but, in the light of what I have just said about the unscrupulous imposition of the Flour Millers' Association, I think it is fair to say that neither the flour millers nor anybody else have any right to impose a standard that is not properly applicable.

My personal belief is that it is possible to determine with enough accuracy the quality of wheat by bushel weight and moisture content. It has been done here in this country for years and experiments on other lines have not proved to be satisfactory.They are being imposed on farmers rather than being accepted by them. Certainly the wheat farmers suspect the 1962 harvest. I know that the flour millers are not against Irish wheat as such. What they are really against is millable Irish wheat. They would prefer to see it unmillable so that they could make more profit per barrel out of it. There is a serious suspicion that wheat that was purchased as unmillable in 1962 at something in the region of 45/- a barrel was sold back the following spring to the same farmers for £6 10s. a barrel as seed. I should like to be assured by the Minister that such things could not happen. I can certainly tell him that there is very grave uneasiness among the wheat farmers that such things are possible.

When I started speaking, I mentioned that I was disappointed that Deputy Donegan speaking on behalf of the Fine Gael Party did not seem to have any new departure of any kind. Apart from the normal Fine Gael practice of promising increased prices for bacon and for crops, increased loans and low taxation, there was nothing new.

I want to say a few words about co-operatives, on this question of the farmer and the organisation of production.I spoke about this here before. I said at that time, and some others did, too, that the ordinary creamery unit as we know it in the south of Ireland is too small to be able to mount an economic effort of sufficient size to be of adequate importance in modern practice. I advocated then that creameries should consider amalgamation into large units. The pattern I took as a possible type would be the amalgamation of the 22 creameries at present in County Kilkenny.

I do not mean in any way to criticise the operations of all creameries. I am quite well aware that many of even the smallest creameries handling the smallest amount of milk have given very remarkable service to their shareholders.I know one particular creamery which is quite a small concern.It has a fertiliser subsidy scheme of its own and the creamery society takes an active interest in the farmers' cattle breeding programme and their grass fertilisation and provides assistance of that kind. We must, however, envisage the chain of production literally from the grass roots in the farmer's field until the produce of his work finds its ultimate end on the housewife's table in this country, in England, or wherever it is. All the factors that make up that chain of production must be brought together like the strands of a rope or else they will not bear the strength they should, or give the support to the members they ought to.

Since we discussed that last, the idea of amalgamation has certainly become more discussed, and I gather that in County Waterford a project for the amalgamation of creameries is well under way. I wish that enterprise all the success it deserves. Amalgamation of this kind must be accomplished for the good of the dairying industry as a whole. A big amalgamated group may, however, fall into the same type of error, the same pattern of relative inactivity, as some of the constituent creameries fell into earlier on. The worst type of creamery was built by the farmers' efforts and money and all the farmer got out of it was a place where he could go with his ass and cart or his pony and cart or his tractor with his milk every day, sell his milk there and that was the end of it. The co-operative society never inquired about his cows or how he fed them, never gave him any advice or told him how the market situation was. That was a creamery of the worst type.

As I said, I know quite well that there are very many creameries of very high standard, much higher than that, but there is a danger that the big amalgamated society might centre all its thoughts on the mere matter of manufacturing whatever product they go in for. Ideally, the function of an organisation of this kind is to start at the grass roots, to advise all their constituent farmers as to the amount of milk it can take from them, how to produce it, how to feed the cattle and how to breed them, and the whole production operation should be planned on that basis right from the field to the consumer's table.

If a big project of that kind of county size were viable, to use a popular word nowadays, it is in a place like that that the advisory service would best be based. It would be necessary, of course, to have a general advisory service for people who do not participate in an operation of this kind. If you assume that you have established the thing and decided how you are going to produce, the job of an agricultural adviser would be far more interesting and satisfactory to the adviser, since he would know fairly precisely the quantity of stuff the farmer was going to produce; he would know quite precisely the number of cattle he had working, and would be able to give very detailed and specific advice to all his farmers as to how to keep the flow of production going at the maximum rate and how best it could be expanded.

I do not think that this is beyond the bounds of achievement or possibility. The survival of the co-operative creameries in the south depends on a big operation of this kind. I think that the farmers whose money built the creamery in the first place would support and maintain the bigger unit and will understand it when it is discussed. I would like to see the dairy industry and the farmers who compose it at least discussing this matter and seeing what they think of it. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that a large section of the dairy industry could be organised on this basis. Every farmer in the provinces of Munster and south Leinster —and in the west as the dairy industry expands—would then become a producer in this planned agricultural economy. When I say "planned agricultural economy", I shudder to think that anybody would understand from that that there would be any sort of direction or that the farmer would be required to do this or that. If they did not do it by their own free will, it would not be worth attempting it at all.

This is something I would envisage for the general uplifting of standards everywhere. There has been some uplifting already, principally through the efforts of the farmers themselves and with the assistance of the schemes I have mentioned, particularly the phosphate fertiliser subsidy. You can give nobody any help as good as the help they can give themselves. The development of this spirit of self-reliance is a bigger need amongst us than we realise. Possibly when Deputy Donegan is Minister for Agriculture, he will do twice as well. I believe any Irish Government will be ready and willing to provide every possible State aid to improve agriculture here. I do not contend that Fine Gael or anybody else are so baleful or lazy that they will not do what is best, but I do contend that we can do it better than they can. Without this determination on the part of the farmers to help themselves, we will not be as successful as we ought to be.

In my constituency there is a very large and expanding meat factory. Like the creamery we spoke of that merely provides a little factory for separating milk and manufacturing it into butter, this big concern—built on the small contributions of thousands of farmers from Waterford, Kilkenny, Wexford and South Tipperary—gives a little dividend, and the people who provided the original share capital hear nothing more about this big co-operative meat factory. In a scheme of the kind I have been describing a co-operatively-owned factory like this could be integrated with great advantage to the shareholders. Every creamery supplier is a meat producer also. Probably thousands of the shareholders in this factory produce beef and pigmeat, but they never get any indication from the factory when they are in the market for lamb, beef, or special qualities of meat. They operate like any privately-owned factory. They go to their own sources of supply and get their requirements at the cheapest rate.

That is not what co-operative enterprises were designed for. They have a duty first to their members. Their constitutions require that they serve their members first. The day is coming when this integration will be brought about. I hope the Minister will encourage it to come faster. The IAOS, who get a fairly large and increasing vote from this House, have not achieved it. I do not like to criticise the IAOS too much. Whether it is because of a defect in their constitution or because of some other reason, they have not done anything really constructive, as far as I know, since their establishment. Either the Minister should make a suggestion to them, or they should do it themselves. It is easy to see how a big meat processing factory such as I have mentioned could be integrated into the scheme I have outlined.

Some experiments have been carried out over the past 12 months in the Carlow part of my constituency in regard to the fertilising of mountain grazings. These experiments, carried out on the side of Mount Leinster, have produced spectacular results. The Minister is probably aware of the high importance of sheep grazing to the economy of Carlow. Many of these grazings are at present very inferior, because until recently it was not possible to get fertiliser up to where you wanted it, or, if you did get it up, to get it spread, but there are various means available to us now that were not available heretofore.

I should like the Minister to examine this general question of mountain grazings, not only in Carlow but in all the mountain areas of the country. There must be a very large untapped resource of middling quality grazing to be had on some mountains, merely by the addition of lime and fertilisers. A big expansion in the carrying capacity of these mountain grazings would mean a revolution in the domestic economy of the people we hear so much about in this House, the small farmers, especially on the western seaboard.

Speaking of the serious problem confronting the small farmers, the Minister has already pointed out that thousands of small farmers here do achieve an acceptable standard of living. In my opinion, these men deserve great credit because they achieve this acceptable standard of living by specialising in some way and almost invariably they are very intelligent, active people who would make a living anywhere you put them. You have small farmers not of that kind and it must be accepted, whether pleasant or not, that the position of many thousands of smallholders is brutally simple. If they do not get a very high production per acre, they have not an acceptable standard of living. It is just simple arithmetic: when you multiply the produce per acre by the number of acres, will you have enough to keep you going for 12 months?

Many people have thrown up their hands about this question and perhaps inadvertently they do great harm. They are the type who say: "We are betrayed; there is no future here for small farmers." People of some eminence have said this without making any proposal to correct the situation if it exists. Loose, misguided talk of that kind can do great harm by destroying morale and affecting the will to survive and prosper as many thousands of these people have done.

Some experiments should be made by the Minister in the development of co-operative farming in, say, congested areas in the west, in Connacht, where it should be reasonably easy to select an area for the purpose. The economies that could be achieved by this method are easy to see—no obligation on individual farmers to maintain unnecessary machinery or work-animals. By organisation, they would be able to cut costs considerably. A high income per acre crop, such as the Sugar Company have been developing recently, should be concentrated in small-farm localities, not alone in the west of Ireland. The splendid pioneering work of the Sugar Company in vegetable and food processing should be channelled towards small farms. This seems to offer a very solid hope not only of survival but of achieving a modicum of prosperity on such farms.

The Sugar Company deserve the congratulations and support of everybody in the country. Their projects, I suggest should be confined as much as possible to small-farm areas. I have often heard Deputies say that the extensive type of farming attempted by some small farmers could not possibly give the return per acre that would give a man an acceptable standard of living. Therefore he must specialise in some way.

Another method by which incomes of such farmers could be supplemented is to give them special assistance for pig enterprises. Deputy Donegan referred to this. You can maintain a fairly big number of pigs on very little land if you have the wherewithal to feed them and the co-operative system would be the best means by which small farmers could attempt such a project.

Mr. Browne

Anybody who heard the Deputy from Kilkenny would certainly not accuse him of making a vindictive speech. I enjoyed it, and I envy his casual approach and his spontaneity. I am sorry, therefore, to have to take him to task on one or two details. In the aftermath of this afternoon, it is not surprising that any Deputy would wander from the straight and narrow path. He prefaced his remarks by accusing Deputy Donegan of repeating what had been repeated here for 25 years. I accuse him of repeating what has been repeated for the past 40 years. I know it was with regret he advised the House that it was his duty to praise the Minister. He was creating no precedent—that was the operative word this afternoon. In fact, only when I saw Deputy Burke attending to his outside duties did I realise that Deputy Gibbons was deputising for Deputy Burke in praising the Minister.

I am not going to praise the Minister or say anything personal. Remove him from his office as Minister, remove from him his political Party and he is a fine fellow in many respects, but I have not much respect for his politics or the way he is running his Department.I must criticise his Department and consequently the Minister. Anything I have to say is not personal but general. The difference—and let me emphasise it—between my address and that of Deputy Gibbons is that he spoke as the representative of the big farmers and I as the representative of the small farmers. I think the Deputy will concede that the difference between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is that they believe in industry and chose as leader of the Party the Taoiseach, a man bred, born and reared with no interest but industry; we elected as our Leader a man who was a former Minister for Agriculture and we believe the economy of this country depends on agriculture.

I represent farmers here: I live among small farmers and they are the best workers in the country. I will tell a little story now. A migrant was migrated from my constituency to County Meath. He was given a 40-acre farm there on which to earn a livelihood. I think all Deputies will concede that even on a 40-acre farm in County Meath today you have to work hard. He worked every inch of that 40 acres. In fact, he went out to the long acres to graze an extra cow. On the far side of the road outside his house he was grazing the long acre. A neighbour, when he saw this going on, said to him after some weeks: "Is it not a wonder you do not graze the far side of the road like you are grazing the opposite side.""Oh, sir," he said, very humbly, "I am keeping that for meadow." The moral of my story is that he had been so trained to utilise every inch of his land in County Mayo, having got a 40-acre farm in County Meath, he still had to go outside the boundaries to keep going.

The farmers whom I represent employ practically no labour. They themselves, in fact, for the greater part of the year look for employment from public authorities. They are what I might describe as working men. The regrettable feature is that their income has remained practically static for the past number of years. It is agreed that in the past five years the cost of living has increased 23 points, approximately 17 per cent since 1957, but there has been no increase in the incomes of the farming community. In fact, the incomes of most farmers have been effectively reduced by about one-sixth since 1957. These are the appalling facts. The result is that a great many small farmers with large families have thrown in their lot and emigrated. It would be just as well if some of our city-minded Deputies and our city-minded Taoiseach woke up to the fact that a regrettable trend is developing in Ireland today, a trend which, if not checked at an early stage, will lead somewhere I should hate to describe.

I want to devote my remarks now to the small farmer. The big farmer is able to look after himself. The big farmer will survive much longer than the small farmer will in bad times. Not so long ago I was speaking to a young boy who emigrated to England from my constituency. He was home on holiday.I asked him: "Is it not a wonder you would not come home to stay with your mother and father on the farm?" He said: "I have no intention of returning to the sort of existence my father has. I am now earning a living and I have no intention of bringing home a wife to be a slave like my mother was." That is a regrettable situation.

We have just heard the Taoiseach announce the green light to the trade unions. What green light did we get last night from the Minister for the small farmers of Ireland? This is the light I got; I got a red light. The only solution he had for the problems of the small farmers in the west of Ireland was (1) a heifer scheme for the big farmers and (2) he had found another new disease for the vets in the country. They are finished with the bovine tuberculosis and someone has now come up with another disease. We will be eradicating all over again for the next five years. Mark you, the farmer is not gaining anything in the process. I can visualise a period again in which the farmer will not be allowed to move his cattle as he was not allowed to move them during the period of tuberculosis testing.

What solution had the Minister's speech last night to offer the people who stood in the fair at Ballina last Friday wringing their hands because they could not dispose of their cattle? What light was there for the people of Crossmolina who stood in the fair last Monday wringing their hands because thy could not sell their stock? My yardstick as to whether or not a farmer is well off is the same yardstick that the pension officer uses when he is going around assessing eligibility for the old age pension: you can determine a man's position by the number of stock he has on his land.

In the west of Ireland, cattle stocks are dropping rapidly. One of the most alarming features at present of the situation obtaining here is that that rot does not seem to be confined just to the west of Ireland. It is widespread. If there is one thing urgently necessary to enable our people to increase the output of stock on the soil it is the improvement of their grasslands. There is not much point, however, in growing grass if you have not got something to eat it.

I come now to a very important aspect of the Minister's speech. He came in here, briefed, in my opinion, by the officials of his Department, to criticise our proposal that capital must be made available to the farmers. He gave us figures of costs but he omitted to mention that it was quite in order for a Government-sponsored body, like the Tourist Board, to make available vast sums of capital to foreigners, in many cases, by way of interest free loans; it was all right to give money to hoteliers and foreigners, but it is apparently all wrong to give it to the farmer to help him to stock his land.

When the former heifer scheme was initiated by the Government, did not the Government advise the banks to give money for heifers on production of a receipt showing one had bought a heifer? Is it not true that many farmers availed of the credit given by the banks to increase their stocks? Is it not true that today, as a result of the prices obtaining for stock, interest has not been paid? Any bank manager will tell you that that is the position. What farmer could afford to pay 6 per cent or 5¾ per cent interest at the rate of profit he is getting for what he produces on the land? I am no economist but I have a practical approach to these things.

I want to direct the attention of the House urgently to the disastrous development of the reduction of the small farmers' incomes which not only leaves rural areas derelict but will react on towns and villages as well. Business people in these towns and villages are suffering through the growing flood of emigration of their best customers. We will all concede that the real customers are the young boys and girls between 18 and 25 years of age.

If one travels throughout rural Ireland today, one will see it denuded of young boys and girls. They have all gone and the land is left in the hands of bachelors and old maids. I do not wish to be misconstrued in the statement I am about to make. I yearn for the day Partition will go. I do not approve of Partition but it amuses me to hear important substantial people talking about bringing in the Six Counties and letting the five counties down in the west of Ireland disappear. Tomorrow the newspapers will be full of the controversy that took place here tonight on the turnover tax and the by-election and I am worried lest in the midst of all that turmoil, the minds of Deputies and of the public will be directed away from the terrible problem in the west.

I can tell the House emphatically that we are a dying race in the west and I shall introduce some figures which will be a lot more factual for the newspapers than some of the things said here earlier today. The population of Mayo in 1936 was 161,347. In 1961, it was 123,180, a loss of 38,300 who left during that period, a drop of 25 per cent. Let me emphasise the gravity of the problem by saying that if this decline continues at this rate, Mayo will become extinct in a very short time.

Is that not a terrible state of affairs and is it without reason that the people down there are highly amused when they hear people talking about taking in these six counties outside our jurisdiction while at the same time permitting Mayo, Galway, Roscommon, Sligo, Leitrim and Donegal to disappear?

However, I see in the darkness a little light. In fact, I have tremendous respect for the statement made by Lt.-General Costello. Speaking in my constituency recently, he said there was hope for the west of Ireland yet if they worked harder and if proposals now before the Government were brought into operation. We have heard quite a lot about the inter-departmental committee set up to inquire into the problems of the west of Ireland. No special committee was needed to tell the House about the west and its problems, but not one iota was done to implement any of the recommendations of that committee. We are no further advanced than we were before that committee was established.We are poorer in money, poorer in population.

Do not forget that we survived hard times in the west of Ireland. We lived through a famine; we survived Cromwell; and we will survive the Department of Agriculture as well. The inter-departmental committee attributed the problems of the west to four main factors: young people did not want to stay on the land; the general run of farmers were not in a position to benefit from fixed-price crops; there was loss of farmyard income from pigs, poultry and eggs; and a lack of industrialisation. What has been done to replace those things that have disappeared?

I do not want to drag the egg around this House. Everybody knows the housewife in the west of Ireland kept the house going on the income she got from the eggs. That has gone, disappeared forever. At Christmas, the small farmer had a few turkeys and geese and the Christmas spending money came from the poultry. That has gone. I do not blame the Minister entirely for this. The pig has gone and with it the last straw from the west of Ireland.

Some years ago, the west was the real pig-producing area of the country. That has changed. I am not sure there is no hope for the pig industry in the west still. The Minister comes from Cavan, a county similar to my own, and many a good bonham we got from that county to be matured in Mayo. I believe the problem created by the disappearance of the pig from the west of Ireland is something that can be remedied, even at this eleventh hour.

I submit that the Minister should consider providing a scheme whereby small farmers in the west could keep two or three sows each. There would be no problem for them at farrowing time. The problems would arise afterwards in the matter of feeding costs and of stabling. The Minister might therefore seriously consider the possibility of setting up a big pig-feeding station in the west to cater for all the bonhams produced from the sows kept on the small farms.

I hope we will become a member of the Common Market, but if we do, we shall be faced with three features, the free movement of men, money and goods. I can foresee that when we become members, we will have the prospect of small farmers coming in from Germany and elsewhere and buying up holdings from which our people have been forced by a careless Government. We must remember that land of medium quality in Germany costs £400 or £500 an acre. It will be a desperate state of affairs if we force our own people off the land to seek an industrial livelihood in foreign lands and if the investment of these people in homes, outoffices and lands is to be for the benefit of people who come in here and who do not share our aspirations, national or otherwise.

As the leader of my Party has said, there is a great opportunity on the continent for the lamb trade. Every farmer knows that you can stock land with sheep for much less capital than you need for cattle. Of course, there is a limit to the number of sheep, unless you are going in for extensive sheep farming, but it does appear that sheep farmers are doing well at the moment, and I should like to see more encouragement given to those who are prepared to go into this form of agricultural activity. If we had better marketing facilities for mutton and lamb and if other markets were explored, we would not be, as we are at present, confined to the French market. The Department should be assiduous in seeking such markets because a farmer with small capital can keep his land well stocked with sheep.

I must ask the Minister in his reply to this debate to tell us something more about his intentions with regard to the west of Ireland. I have emphasised that we in the west are a dying race, that we are neglected. The small farmer is the backbone of this country and every farmer's homestead is a little industry in itself. In an area where you had 400 or 500 small farms, you had 400 or 500 little industries but now you have only 30 or 40 houses occupied in such areas. In their efforts to improve their standards of living after the war, farmers who had some little capital invested it in developing their homes but even with the Government grant and the local authority grant, it took the greater part of £1,000 extra capital to provide suitable accommodation for the small farmer's wife and family.

It is all very well to talk about increased grants for piggeries, cowbyres and the various other buildings. What is the use of giving the small farmer a fine business without the money to run it? What would be the use of giving me Guineys if I did not have the capital to run it? What is the point in throwing grants at the farmers for all these buildings if you do not make capital available to them to run the business? Without capital you cannot succeed and the farmer is short of capital today because his income has not been increased. We are now ready to take on the ninth round of wage increases but the farmer is as static in his income as he was in 1947. What the farmer needs is an injection of capital.

The Minister tried to ridicule our proposal to advance interest-free loans up to £1,000. I do not say that every farmer in the west of Ireland will look for those loans. He has the Agricultural Credit Corporation to go to but the trouble about that is that his income is not able to stand up to the rate of interest. If you make capital available to the farmer, you are increasing the national income. You are giving him capital to invest in something that can be exported. We all know that 70 per cent of our exports are agricultural exports. The Minister has at his hands a readymade system of investigation in the Agricultural Credit Corporation and every grant would be given only on its merits. Give the money to the people who require it. That is the only way you will keep the farmers on the land.

When the Minister introduced the heifer scheme he said he was giving something to the farmers. I am afraid he was ill-advised by his officials.

The Minister is responsible for policy and not the officials.

Mr. Browne

I apologise to you and to the Minister but I should like to say that while the Minister is responsible for policy he must be getting bad advice.

I am so knowledgeable myself in that respect that I do not need advice.

Mr. Browne

With due respect to the Minister, I think he has forgotten all about the small farmer. The Minister brought in a heifer scheme and it is the big rancher who will benefit from it. The small farmer in Mayo did not benefit from the rate reduction scheme. It was the big farmer in Kilkenny and elsewhere who benefited from it and it is the big farmer who will benefit from this scheme. The small farmer will be lucky if he gets £15 a year out of it.

The small farmer would do better if he got £5 for every calf born. Deputy Gibbons mentioned that the demand for heifers is going to jump so high that it will not be possible to get them. In that event, what is to happen to the bullock? You are giving a boost to the heifer trade and neglecting the bullock trade. I would like the Minister to point out who will benefit from the heifer scheme but I am afraid that the small farmer is being neglected again. He does not count.

At the outset, I wish to deprecate anybody trying to drive a wedge between any section of farmers, whether they be big, middle or small farmers. As far as I am concerned, they are all farmers. We are dealing with an Estimate which covers a large variety of matters. I shall start with the educational and advisory services of the Department. I note that the Estimate for this Department is increasing every year and this year has reached the grand total of approximately £39 million. If we really want —as I think we all do—a better return from agriculture, we should realise that the keystone is agricultural education and advisory services from people educated in a manner in which agriculturists should receive education. Certainly, the Department has done wonderful work regarding its system of agricultural education. I do not suggest that the limit of efficiency has been reached but I appreciate that there are marked improvements year by year.

Agricultural education, in the first instance, caters for and fits boys and girls to become agricultural advisers of one kind or another. Our advisory service is very important in relation to agriculture. I have an idea that its importance is not as well appreciated as it should be by our farmers and perhaps even by some members of county committees of agriculture.

It is pleasing to note that the work of the Agricultural Institute is starting to show its benefits to agriculture. I congratulate the Minister on making available more agricultural advisers for congested areas. I appreciate more fully the fact that those advisers will be under the Department's committees of agriculture. I firmly believe that we have not yet anything like enough agricultural advisory services. I pay tribute to the Minister and his Department for what has been done but I do not think this should be anything like the end. I am convinced that the need for agricultural advisory services will become greater day by day.

The late Deputy Thomas Walsh, when Minister for Agriculture, agreed to an intensive advisory service in a creamery district adjacent to where I live. At the time I was chairman of the Cork County Committee of Agriculture and I accompanied a deputation to the Minister, who agreed to give us an intensive advisory service on certain conditions. One was that it would cater for all the farmers in that area, whether or not they were sending their milk to that creamery. Another condition was that the service would have to be under the supervision of the local county committee, acting for the Department of Agriculture. Incidentally, the county committee were paying 50 per cent of the cost of that service, the local creamery were paying the other 50 per cent. A third condition was that this service was not to be regarded as a precedent but as an experiment.

The professors of University College, Cork, went around the area and made a survey of the production for the previous year. They called to each house. They were helped in that survey by the members of a local committee and portion of the cost was defrayed from the local co-operative society's funds. Five years passed and in that time a casual observer could see that the face of the countryside had changed. We had early grass. It was not really a tillage area.

University College people again went to work on another survey: that is a good many years ago now. However, the result of that survey was never given to the Cork County Committee of Agriculture, and I believe that what they found was not given either to the local co-operative society. That is a disgraceful state of affairs for professors of a university to condone. I do not like to attack people who are not here to defend themselves, but I want to register my disapproval of their neglect.

A very useful thing in the line of education was introduced a couple of years ago. The vocational education people combined with the Department of Agriculture in running winter farm classes. There were some of them in Cork County, including the constituency I represent and, as far as I can gather, they proved a great success. We found a little reluctance at the start among some who thought people could not do a good job for themselves.However, before even the first course began, all those who applied could not be accepted. I would suggest the extension of these winter farm school schemes to other districts. Instead of having three in Cork, I would like to see half a dozen each winter and a corresponding number in other counties.

In my county I am glad to note that the young farmers and farmers' sons are availing themselves very much of winter agricultural classes. At this rate it will be a good many years before we have reached the stage where all young men who want to earn their livelihood by farming and by the care and management of their own farms can receive education in one of the Department's agricultural schools but the winter classes, plus the winter farm schools, are an invaluable aid to these people.

I must also congratulate the Department and the Minister on the successful drive against bovine tuberculosis. It was rather a tough job to undertake.I live in one of the six counties where eradication has not yet been completed but I was glad to note a few weeks ago at a bovine TB eradication advisory committee meeting in Cork that the incidence of the disease has come down to four per cent, from the original figure of over 30 per cent. I was also very pleased to note that the Department intend to take up all the reactors in these remaining counties and have them disposed of before the end of the year. Farmers may haggle and grumble about price— whether they are justified in that I do not know — but getting rid of the reactor is the most important thing of all. We will not feel the full effects of the eradication scheme until the last reactor has been removed from the Twenty-six Counties. When that is done, we can reasonably assume that the price of our cattle will be a good deal higher.

I wish to compliment the Minister and the Department on the subsidisation of artificial fertilisers and lime over the years. In my district, at least, that has resulted in the land carrying increased stock and in an increased production of milk. If I take my constituency into account, which I always do when speaking here, there may be some areas where the main way of living is grain growing, and so on, but generally speaking it is a dairying district.

The Minister and his Department are also to be congratulated on the introduction of this £15 for each extra heifer added to the herd. Somebody mentioned that the small farmer gets nothing out of it. At the start, the small farmer does not get as much out of it as I would wish him to get, but if he has three or four heifers incalf every year, when there is a £15 bonus going you can reasonably expect he should get somewhere around half of it. I think he is entitled to it. The man who adds the heifers cannot keep repeating it year after year but for three or four years at least, the small farmer will be getting the £7 10/- extra for that calf, and more luck to him, although he is not getting nearly as much as I would wish him to get.

There are many branches of agriculture but dairying is the foundation and the greatest of all. I am pleased to note that, despite the lamentations of born pessimists—I have heard it represented down in my constituency over the past two or three years that with the removal of the reactor, there would be no milk available for the creameries—the supply of milk to the local creameries is increasing according as the reactors are being dropped out. It shows how wrong some people can be.

As a dairy farmer myself, I would like to see more being given for milk. When considered in relation to other sections of the community, the dairy farmer is entitled to more and the gap between the earnings of the agricultural worker and the industrial worker should be made much narrower.I know this cannot be done overnight. It may entail some difficulty and I am glad to note that in official statements the Government have made it quite clear they are trying to close that gap. I hope they will be as successful in closing it as they were in closing the gap between output and wages during the past 12 months.

One of the great industries in my part of the country, next to cattle raising and milk, is the pig industry. It is a very important industry. Deputy Browne from Mayo stated that the pig industry had gone from the west. He also stated that western farmers had no sale for their cattle at the last couple of fairs. I do not know much about the west but I was through portion of the Deputy's county some months ago. Going through it made me feel rather penitent because the majority of the land I saw could scarcely be regarded as land at all, except perhaps by a shipwrecked sailor. It is very poor country. I am not going to lecture Deputy Browne or the people of the west. They have my utmost sympathy. I cannot see why they got out of pigs or why they have not availed of the fertiliser and lime schemes as people have in other counties.

Mention was made of wheat offals. We are wasting a lot of our time and we should turn our attention to something more practical. We find of course that Irish wheat is costing more and the farmer is entitled to get more. It is believed from the other angle that foreign wheat went up again this year and the price of offals went down, for which, from the farming point of view, we are glad. It is the usual way with business; these are things which will fluctuate and nobody can control them, but I do not understand why the pig industry has gone anywhere. A special attempt should be made by the Government in the congested areas in this regard. They have tried to do a lot for these areas but an attempt should be made to encourage the pig industry in them. I do not know if the west is as badly off in regard to fertiliser as a recent survey showed West Cork to be. If it is, the first thing that should be done is to try to get the holdings fertilised.

I know that Deputy Browne mentioned that the people would have to buy cattle but the Agricultural Credit Corporation have some fairly good schemes and lend money on fairly good terms. If you use a man's money, you must pay for the loan of it. We have all had to borrow money but we survived. Courage is half the battle, no matter what you are battling for and in farming, you definitely want courage. Above all, you want a lot of courage in politics.

You will want it in Cork now.

The courage you will get there will be true courage. In the main, the Department and the Minister are doing a pretty good job. It is all very grand to talk about prices and the rest of it, and what we are going to get for milk, but somehow I do not believe it because when the Opposition were in Government, they asked us to reduce the price of milk by two-pence a gallon instead of increasing the price. Let us be practical, no matter how we are going to argue with one another across the floor of this House. For the sake of ourselves and the people, do not sing songs of despair, particularly when there are no grounds for despair. It is a very bad thing if you try all the time to dishearten people. I daresay that some people have emigrated because others were explaining to them that they could not live here. That is a wrong policy. We should always strike a cheerful note.

I can remember people, particularly small farmers, who had to work hard to survive and who did survive. They worked harder than people have to work today. I do not want the people today to be the slaves people were in other times. It is a good thing that they reached the stage at which they could get away from the poverty and misery which existed for generations. What I am saying is the truth and I do not care who criticises me for it. The world today is not as large as it was and you can go to New York and back in one day if you want to. All you require is the cost of the journey. The dangers of travelling are not as bad as they were. We have emigration and we have people leaving the land, but the extraordinary thing is that although many people have left the land within the past ten years, the output of the land has increased. It shows that somebody is making the best use of modern development methods. That is what we should try to do.

I was glad to hear Deputy Browne mention the food processing factories. Earlier, somebody mentioned a rumour that all was not well with them. I am not a member of the new company but I am a member of the council of the Beet Growers' Association and my information is to the contrary, that the work is going ahead to get those factories going, to get the essential crops grown and while I do not know the date, something is supposed to be done this year. In a matter of this sort, everybody will give the necessary encouragement to get the vegetables grown for processing. I admit it requires capital to start companies to engage in these activities and where money is borrowed, there must be taxation to pay it back.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.
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