Skip to main content
Normal View

Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 14 Nov 1963

Vol. 205 No. 11

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

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

I have some further observations to make in regard to this Vote. It is only right that I should express appreciation of the Department's intention to import certain breeds of cattle with a view to improving our herds here, and that provision has been made to have them quarantined on Spike Island. That is definitely a step in the right direction because we are living in a world where it is only the best that can get tops at market level. There is no point in trying to carry on with inferior stuff; there is no point in our having a breed of animal which is slow to develop, slow to put on flesh, and it is only by examining every avenue, including the importation of limited numbers of livestock, that the farmers can eventually get the best that can be got in any country in which they are competing.

I should like also to express my appreciation of the great service the artificial insemination stations have done to improve our cattle, both beef and milk, so that we have not got the two qualities under the one hide as we had before, but each in its own live container. The Department have had over the years a number of very useful premium schemes—premiums for bulls, premiums for mares, premiums for boars and for rams.

These are very good schemes and are very helpful in keeping the types of animal I have mentioned well up to standard as far as breed is concerned. As I have mentioned premium boars, I have often wondered, now that we have two distinct breeds, plus one which is not so distinct, whether the Agricultural Institute might not like to deal with the problem to see what cross or crosses, to see what breed or breeds are the best for the farmer and for manufacture into bacon. The pig industry is very important, particularly for the congested districts. It is also important for a good many others who can afford it. It is not uncommon now to see large numbers of pigs being bred, reared and fattened, either all on the same place or in different places. You may find a breeder getting out young pigs in one place and a feeder fattening them in another. In the old days, pigs were fattened more by the small farmer than the large farmer.

I much appreciate the farm buildings scheme. There has been the suggestion of further increases in the grants and I suggest that the Minister should give a specially high grant to farmers with a valuation under £20 to encourage them to have better houses for their milch cows and suitable houses for the breeding, rearing and fattening of pigs. Good houses are very essential for the economic production of pigs on the farm. There is a big difference between the ratio of meal production in a cold, draughty house and in the proper type of house.

I had great pleasure this year in seeing the three types of piggeries put up by the Institute at Moore Park. I was amazed to find that the cheapest type produced the healthiest stock. It may be a bit early for the Department to take it on themselves to give definite advice as to the best type of building for the production of bacon but I was very much struck by the cheaper type house. I think the ratio of meat production was practically the same as in the others and the stock were healthy but that does not mean that it would remain so. We would like to see the experiment carried further. A good many people intend to put up houses for the fattening of pigs and they would appreciate it if the Department were able to give them advice with regard to the erection of a not very expensive house.

Over the years, wonderful work has been done under the Land Project for the improvement of land and the majority of farmers have followed up by a course of fertilisation or, in some cases, by tillage, followed by the application of fertiliser and lime. There are, unfortunately, still a number of people whose land was drained and who did very little with it afterwards.They did not follow up either with lime or with artificial fertiliser. Public money spent on such people is wasted. It is true that times may change and that someone else may come into occupation of the holding, or these people may get a change of heart and give the land the necessary lime and fertiliser.

We also want advisory services in respect of the rare problems that may arise with any particular crop. We have been going into decent and highgrade grass production in some places and in some instances there has been trouble. The treatment of these problems is a veterinary job as it has regard to certain ailments which occur from feeding some of the very nutritious grasses which are now growing. Some research work should be done in the Department's veterinary section to produce a treatment, either by the hypodermic needle or otherwise, for the prevention of ailments such as red water, mastitis and grass tetany which occur in cattle. There is a pressing need to combat these ailments.

A peculiar position has arisen in regard to our veterinary service. They are all hard at work in my area, which is part of the six counties not yet attested, testing cattle under the bovine TB eradication scheme and to my own knowledge, it is very hard for a farmer to get a vet for any other purpose. I knew of a farmer recently who had a milch cow suffering from timber tongue. He knew a good deal about cattle. He knew the drug for the cure of timber tongue but the chemist could not sell it to anyone other than a veterinary officer. The cow was almost dead when a vet was finally secured. These drugs should be made available to farmers. There is no point in eradicating TB in cattle if they are allowed to die from other causes. This is not hearsay; I have personal knowledge of the cases of which I am speaking.

I have read the survey team's report on the pigmeat industry. I agree with many of the suggestions in that report but there is one suggestion with which I do not agree, that the inefficient bacon factories should be bought out and that the pig producer should help to pay for the buying out by way of levy. My view is that any inefficient firm should be left to stew in its own juice. The Pigs and Bacon Commission should set the highest standard possible for bacon at the factories and if some firms are not able to keep up to that standard, get them out. They are a good riddance.

I am also in full agreement with many of the suggestions made by the survey team on the dairying industry, but I do not believe the time is ripe, if it ever will be, for concentrating in a few centres the manufacturing of our milk into the various products. There are many objections to it. The local creamery, along with being a source of employment, is very often in purely rural areas a centre where social activities can directly or indirectly be carried out. Centralisation would cost a pile of money and farmers far away from those centres might find themselves, in the height of the season, with nobody to take the milk because there was a labour dispute. Those are the dangers I see. Naturally labour is entitled to look for its rights and the worker needs adjustment in his conditions now and then, but until such time as labour disputes can be avoided, it would be unwise for the Government or the Department to accept that suggestion from the survey team.

We are living in a world of civilised nations and industries in civilised countries are highly organised. The unfortunate farmers the world over seem never to be able to build a proper organisation.

Not in Limerick.

That is not my idea of proper organisation although they are entitled to have it as far as I am concerned. However, if we are to succeed, it is essential that our agricultural community be properly organised and that each section of agriculture should be organised independently of the other sections. For instance, the livestock man should have his organisation and the creamery milk suppliers should have theirs. There should be an organisation of sheep owners, pig breeders and fatteners, poultry owners, and so on.

Furthermore, these different organisations should have a national council to co-ordinate the different sections so that when farmers go to look for anything or when a section is looking for it, they will be in a position to speak with one voice. I have been preaching this in other places for a number of years and I hope I am not looking for the impossible. The farmers seem to be unfortunate. Looking back to when the world was very young, I have been struck by the thought that there were only two farmers in the world. They could not agree and one slew the other. Is that the curse that is hanging over us today? If it is, it is about time our people cast it off and organised for their own benefit.

It is possible to get plenty of organisations if you say you want an increased price for this or an increased price for that. Good prices are very important but another matter is more important: the ways and means of getting those prices, proper organisations, using proper methods. Perhaps also those sections I have mentioned could give advice as regards production and other problems. I am as anxious to get proper prices for the farmers as anybody else, maybe more so; my only disagreement is in regard to the methods of obtaining them.

I hope the Minister and his Department may be spared long to provide the needs of agriculture and that the farmers will have sense enough to realise that fighting among themselves is no way to success. I also hope that somebody big enough and strong enough will start to organise them on the lines I have suggested.

I come from a farming area and I want to say a few words on conditions as I know them in that area. Dairying is the principal industry in my part of the country. The majority of the people there are small farmers who cannot go into the pig industry in a big way. Time and time again, at meetings of the county committee of agriculture and elsewhere, we have asked that a higher price be paid for milk.

The small farmer in my area is dependent solely on the cheque he gets from the creamery. In other parts of the country, farmers may get a creamery cheque for 12 months of the year. The people in my district will get a creamery cheque for only seven months of the year. It is a cold type of country. It is not the same type of land as the land about which the previous Deputy spoke. I earnestly appeal to the Minister to give consideration to the price of milk because 1/6d., 1/7d. and 1/8d. is still a very small price for milk, seeing that the farmer and his family now have to pay 4/9d., I think, for the lb. of butter they have to buy. If butter were at a reasonable price, it would not be so serious but the cost of living has soared so high that it is all-important that the farmer I am talking about should get special consideration.

In the past, we had a fair measure of employment for the small farmer. During the winter months, he could supplement his income by going out to get employment. With the introduction of machinery and now that things are done in such a big way, even that employment is killed. That means that he has to depend solely on his income from his small farm. He cannot depend on the poultry industry. During the past three or four years, the housewife might be lucky enough to go out to a good market but the chances were that the market would be very bad. Therefore, the majority of people ceased to rear turkeys at all. That is the position in my part of the country. That industry should be looked after better than it is. We supply only three per cent of the needs of the British market. I read an article not so long ago in which it was said that if an effort were made to get our Irish emigrants to buy even one turkey per family, it would step up our percentage.With Irish turkeys representing only three per cent of the British market, the position is very serious. Something requires to be done to give the housewife encouragement to rear the turkeys and certainly to give her protection so that when she goes to sell them, she will be sure of a fair price.

Eggs are almost out of the question.Housewives do not bother about them because from April until September, they are hardly worth collecting in the sheds—1/6d., 2/- and various prices but never higher. A guaranteed price would give these people something to go on. They could then either go into the industry or keep out of it. As they are, they do not know what they will get and the majority of them keep clear of it. I have attended some of those auctions I am talking about. It was sad to see people who had come long journeys with cartloads of turkeys having to go home again without making any sales.

Schemes are put into operation but a farmer will not qualify under some of these schemes without having drainage work carried out on the land. A scheme was sanctioned by the Department of Agriculture and applied to north-east Leitrim, from where I come. I have seen that scheme in operation and I worked on that scheme. I carried out part of that scheme myself. I have had to put drains in fields, in order to qualify for that grant, and one might as well put a drain across a tarred road. The field was dry and hard and was starved for manure but it certainly did not need drainage. That matter should very carefully be examined. Around the country, the same applies. We have the very best of land starved for manures. It would be well if they were available at a cheaper price and if the advisory officers were a little more active, as I think they will be in future because they are being employed in greater numbers. The position would then be greatly improved. Hitherto, there was only one advisory officer for the north, one for the south, and so on. Let the adviser be more active and advise the people on the type of manure needed and by all means provide cheaper manures for the types of farmers I am talking about. They are not able to meet the cost owing to the small income they are deriving from their creamery.

I come now to the heifer scheme. I complimented the Minister last week. I have been in consultation with quite a number of people since and have been at a few fairs or have passed through them. The majority of the people think that if the Minister had given a subsidy for the calf, he would have included every person who kept cows. Now, by starting with the heifer, it is possible that the farmer who was encouraged to make his farm a success heretofore will not be in a position to avail even of one £15. The danger is that some people will make a great profit out of this scheme introduced by the Minister. The scheme certainly is a great inducement and already there has been a marked improvement in the sale of heifers at the fairs.

The Minister should not forget that if he had started with a subsidy for the calves, let it be small or large, or for a limited number of calves, it would still include every man keeping cows. That has been a great inducement to people across the Border to keep cattle. They get a very substantial allowance and the result is they are determined to make sure that they have their cows and their calves and it is a profitable undertaking. I would ask the Minister to look into that matter. It is a new scheme and I suppose new schemes always have to take their course for a while until they can be improved.

In my part of the country, there are many brood mares and there is a good demand over a very wide area for a thoroughbred horse. We have none in south Leitrim, an area which is far removed from both north Sligo and north Leitrim. There is quite an amount of money in brood horses at the moment and the county committee of agriculture have sent a resolution to the Department asking them to give careful consideration to this matter. I am raising the matter now for the Minister's consideration, which I know will be favourable. The cost of bringing a brood mare from, say, Bundoran to the Longford border is almost as high as the service fee of £10. That is a very expensive undertaking and in some cases it takes two days.

Another problem which we have in Leitrim, and which has come up on several occasions recently, is that the Department do not give any special Hereford bulls. There are special Shorthorn bulls and special Aberdeen Angus bulls but there are no special Hereford bulls. I would ask the Minister to consider this for my area because the Hereford is becoming very popular and people are anxious to have this breed. To get the special term Hereford bull to Dublin or to the show at Carrick-on-Shannon is very expensive.

In regard to the Land Project, Part B has been abandoned. It did encourage farmers to work on their own land especially in regard to drainage. I would ask the Minister to consider restoring Part B. The situation is very serious in parts of the country today, especially after the last three days of rain we had on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, and the land is in a desperate condition. There is no drainage money from the Department or from the county council and the only way to get land drainage work done is by a group of people coming together and obtaining a Rural Improvements Scheme grant. Other than that, there is not much money for drainage and I would ask the Minister to consider that.

It is only right that we should congratulate the co-operative stores and the NFA in my part of the country. In Manorhamilton, they played a very useful part in coming to the rescue of small farmers by giving them the foodstuffs which they required for their cattle to tide them over a period in which they had no ready cash coming in. The co-operative stores and the NFA in Manorhamilton went to the north of Ireland and elsewhere and bought hay so that the cattle would not be lost.

Last year, ground wheat, or unmillable wheat, was being sold at 28/- and 29/-. Unmillable wheat that is stored in thousands of tons should be available at a smaller price. There was a big subsidy paid for it but the farmers had to pay almost as much for it as they had to pay for Indian meal or some other type of meal. I would ask the Minister to see if it is possible to have this unmillable wheat on sale at less than 28/- or 29/-. We have at the moment the establishment of food-processing factories and the farmers of the area will be appealing to the Minister for cheaper manures. Until I became a TD, I never knew that there were so many small farmers. It will only be by getting the price for the crops he will grow for those factories that this type of farmer will survive. He has not the same liberty in respect of cows and calves and if he is able to produce plenty of these crops for these factories, it will be his only hope of survival. There is talk about making all these small farms into a bigger farm and providing some other livelihood for the small farmers. That would be very difficult to do because the small farmer is just as proud and fond of his small farm as the big farmer is of his.

I have so many things to say about agriculture that I do not know where to start.

They will all be good.

We might as well take our lead from the Leader of the Government himself. We are always hearing Fianna Fáil attacking this side and talking about the great Fianna Fáil policies and the stupid policies that come from this side. The Minister's brief is a confession of the failure of the continued fundamental Fianna Fáil policy. For three decades, Fianna Fáil endeavoured to destroy the livestock trade in this country, but now we have a Fianna Fáil Government promoting a heifer scheme to increase our livestock. I would call this delayed action restitution, but it is not sufficient restitution. It will be an advantage to a man to get £15 for his heifer calves, that is, if he has a heifer. It should be the aim of Government policy to assist the not-so-well-off farmer. We are told he has the Agricultural Credit Corporation. It is more important that people should be put in a position to buy the extra cattle they need.

Down through the years also Fianna Fáil have hounded this side of the House with the meanest and vilest propoganda, particularly a former Minister for Agriculture whom they called "the Minister for Grass". That was dishonest and it did a grave injury to this nation. During all their long term of office, they did nothing about grasslands. Some people may say they were right. If so, I should like to quote from the Irish Independent of 5th September, 1963, where the Taoiseach is reported as presenting the prizes to the winners of the National Grass Production Competition in the Shelbourne Hotel Ballroom, Dublin. On that occasion he announced to the nation:

For many years the products of our grasslands had been the sheet anchor of our export trade and in the prevailing market situation they constituted the best opportunity for increased exports.

Nobody in the Government benches, therefore, can justify the Fianna Fáil continued neglect of our grasslands over the years and the destruction of our flocks and herds. It speaks well for Irish agriculture that it was able to stand up to persecution by successive Fianna Fáil Governments.

In the Budget of 1957, with a great flourish of trumpets, a sum of £250,000 was allotted to the Department of Agriculture for the expansion of our agricultural markets and the opening up of new markets. For six or seven years, nothing was done about it. I asked the Minister questions here about how much was spent. I was told £12,000 had been spent and that a few meetings had been held in Dublin. There was no such thing as expanding markets or looking for markets, no endeavour to find a market for our surplus wheat, our surplus bacon and our surplus butter. In fact, the turkey market was allowed to die. Then we started to get reports. Recently we have been getting so many reports of surveys that we will have a library of them before we are finished. We had reports from the survey teams set up by the Minister for Agriculture to inquire into dairy produce, reports on beef, mutton and lamb and on the bacon and pig meat industry.

I shall deal with the latter first. Perhaps the people making these surveys are not as old as I am, but I remember how the equivalent of these surveys operated. I was a victim of them. This report recommends to the Minister that inefficient bacon factories be closed down. It is hard to say what is an inefficient factory. An enormous factory, sparkling in chromium, white tiles and machinery, might not pay, but you might have a man with what might appear to be an old fashioned factory, who could make it pay, who could produce better bacon and who, most important of all, would know the kind of pig he should process and how he could come by such pigs.

The report of this survey recommends that the industry be "rationalised". This is one of our new words. They "rationalised" the milling industry, and closed all the small mills in the country. Now they want to "rationalise" the bacon industry. There is a great danger in this. The people who prepare these surveys never think of the human element. Say the Minister agrees to their proposal and closes certain factories, leaving only four or five in the whole country, compensation will have to be paid to the factory owners and workers. The compensation to the workers will not be sufficient to make up for losing their jobs. I know small towns where there are efficient small bacon factories.They are a great boon to these towns, which would die without them.

The survey team could not think of any other way of paying for these closures except by putting a levy on the pigs, meaning that the farmers will have to pay for it. I asked the Minister a question on this matter only this week and I hoped he would make a definite statement on it. The Minister is a clever and able debater. He replied in such a way that I hardly knew where I was. He said he was not sure whether the Pigs Commission had a legal right to do this but if they had not, they would have to bring it to the Dáil. I put it to the Minister that the Pigs Commission are responsible to him and before they take any steps to rationalise the bacon trade or any portion of it, they should come to him and he should come to the House. Two of the Minister's colleagues have got into a way of ducking their heads, the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and the Minister for Transport and Power. One says: "That is a matter for CIE" and the other: "That is for Telefís Éireann; I cannot interfere with them." I expect more from the Minister for Agriculture and I think I shall get it from him in that he will not allow the Pigs Commission their head.

We must go by what has happened in the past. The Pigs Commission was the child of the Pigs Marketing Board which came out of two Acts about 1935, 1936 and 1937. That was the real destruction of the pig trade. It put the pig out of the small farmer's yard. It has been stated here that the numbers of pigs on small farms of less than 50 acres have fallen, the greatest fall being on the smallest farm, while the number of pigs on farms of over 100 acres has risen, the greatest rise being on farms of over 200 acres.

One of the best sources of income for the Irish small farmers was taken away from him by two Acts of this House. As a result, a Prices Commission was set up by the Fianna Fáil Government consisting of Messrs. C. C. McElligott, Thomas Johnson, S. B. Ó Faoilleacháin and Joseph Griffin. This document was signed by Joseph Griffin on 24th October, 1938, and shows what could happen a great industry when it is handed over to a few bacon curers. It says on page 29:

But, in our opinion, the scheme places the Bacon Curers in a position of undue advantage between the pig producers and bacon consumers, with the result that unreasonably high prices have been charged to the home consumers. This has been due to the fact that the powers conferred on the Bacon Marketing Board have been utilised, by the Curers who compose the Board, for promoting the interests of the curers with insufficient consideration for the interests of the consumers or the producers.

It is our opinion that the obligation imposed by the Pigs and Bacon Act, 1935 (Section 98), upon the Bacon Marketing Board to make production orders, which limit the quantity of bacon which each licensed curer is permitted to cure, both for the home market and for export, has had the effect of restricting competition between curers within very narrow limits.

There would be the death knell of whatever is left of the pig trade in Ireland if the survey was carried out. You would have about four curers and the Irish farmer would be contracted probably to whichever one was nearest, and the price would be fixed. I do not care what the Minister or his officials or the bacon survey team may say, the bacon curers would fix that price.

What is happening about prices to-day?Who fixes them? Fair competition fixed prices yesterday in Dublin market and for weeks and months past that has been the position. Through that fair competition—I wish the gentleman in the Gallery would come down and make his speech here—to give an instance of how it works, you would have curers giving £12 per cwt. for the best pigs and the best pigs making £13 per cwt. on Dublin market as they did yesterday with no grading. What is wrong with that? Why should that be destroyed? The only reason I can give is that one of the foremost men I knew in the bacon industry—he has now gone out of the bacon trade— actually moulded the Acts and sold the idea to the Minister's predecessor in a Fianna Fáil Government and he said: "Thank God, this senseless competition is all gone. We can now sit down and let them have it".

I know the Minister would not allow anybody to do that. What was the result of this junta set up in those years? The bacon curers were hauled before the Prices Commission as I have said and in 1934, when our agriculture was bleeding to death and when the Irish farmer could not afford to be done out of 5/-, this is what the Commission found:

Taking the standard of profit to curers suggested by us in Paragraph 55, namely, 7 per cent on capital employed, it is clear that excessive profits were taken by curers in the period from 1934 to 1937, inclusive. In regard to each year we have made the following calculation:—

1934: The suggested standard of profit would represent in this year 1/8¼d. per cwt. of bacon produced, against 1/10¾d. per cwt. taken by the curers. The excess profit taken was approximately £10,000.

That is bagatelle in 1963 but it was a lot of money in 1934. In 1935, they were getting into their stride and the excess profit was £39,000. I want to draw the Minister's attention particularly to this to ensure that it can never happen again. It was a real Dick Turpin or Jesse James act at a time when many unfortunate people were beaten to the ground, getting no prices for anything. The Prices Commission found that in 1936 the standard profit would represent 1/6d. a cwt. on bacon produced, against 5/4d. a cwt. taken by the curers. The excess profit taken was approximately £207,000. We are sailing into the same waters again with the bacon survey team.

In 1937, the excess profit was £52,000 because by then they had hammered the pig feeding industry so hard that pigs had become scarce. I was not able to get the figure yesterday for 1957 but I saw the bridge of Waterford white with pigs brought in from over the water to keep the bacon sellers going. They had put the pig breeders in the Twenty-Six Counties out of business. Yet, out of the few pigs that were there, they hammered £52,000 in excess profits. I want to repeat this: the profits I am talking about were excess profits. I am not against profits by bacon curers or anyone else; people are entitled to profits, and good profits; but these were excess profits squeezed out of pig producers who were losing plenty of money, a great many of them losing what they really had not got and contracting debts which have never been paid. That is the position.

I shall deal with another side of the matter now. In the year before the deluge, before Fianna Fáil came into office, we exported 700,000 live pigs. Then, of course, the man who never fed a pig, and the man who knows nothing about the bacon trade, the man who would have a prejudice at the time against anything for export, engendered a new policy. I heard people screaming their heads off on public platforms: "We will keep them at home; we will process them at home for our own people". In the end, they nearly had to hang them around the people's necks because the majority of the pigs that were exported in the circumstances I have mentioned were not pigs suitable for the Irish bacon curer. Of course, the gentlemen who were pouring out all this false propaganda all over the country did not know that.

We were eating American bacon at that time.

And what harm was that? The position was that at that time people were able to feed a pig and get a few pounds for it; but, when you kept them at home and created such a glut of fat bacon at home, the people just did not want it. Whatever is said, people were getting something out of pigs at that time. People were going into pigs. God is on my side: I have here to hand the figures for over 100 years. The largest number of pigs ever in this country was in it in 1931, the year before the deluge.

That is not so.

I have the figures here. Long-term trends in total pig numbers in thousands: 1st June, 1851, 902,000. These are from the "State of Irish Agriculture, 1960/61, An Foras Talúntais". That is the source. We will jump now to 1911, 1,100,000; 1921, 901,000; 1931, 1,227,000; 1941, 764,000. In 1931, we had the largest number of pigs in this country.

Come on up to 1961 and 1962.

Do you know what it is? God is good to me; the Minister asks the question. I will repeat the 1931 figure— 1,227,000: 1962, 1,113,000. I am still in front.

It was very good all the same.

Would the Deputy give us the 1932 price?

We were fighting the Economic War then.

I am talking about before the Economic War.

I can give the Deputy that price—£5 10s. a cwt. and £5 a cwt. I am standing on that.

That was not the price.

That was the price. There they go again. There is the fantasy. That is all the destruction and they still come along to defend it.

I shall be defending it in a minute.

And I suppose the Deputy will defend the slaughter of 500,000 calves at the same time?

We won all the same, and we are very proud of it.

What did you win? The farmers will be paying annuities forever.

(Interruptions.)

Order. Deputy Lynch.

I am not ashamed of myself at all. We were ground into the dust. We had a former President saying he would whip John Bull. God help us. Our role was supposed to be bad. Therefore our role was wrong. Therefore the Government were right. How could any Government be right on the facts and figures I have given? We must judge by results. People on farms must judge by results. They judge by what they are getting for their stock.

I am warning the Minister now that a Fianna Fáil Government have been over this course with a bacon survey and I am warning the Minister not to go over this course again.

I want to deal with live pigs now. Here is one for the Minister: it is right up to the minute— Wednesday, November 13th:

Producers Seek Support for Pig Store Trade.

The greatest news pig producers could receive would be a promise of assistance to the export trade in live pigs, similar to the aid given to the pork and bacon exports, so as to help resume the country's trade in live pigs....

Any restriction in the sale and marketing of live pigs would almost certainly sound the death knell of pig production.

It would interfere with the competition I have been talking about.

Mr. Paul Cunningham, Dublin, said that as a result of the endeavours of members of the Association in getting markets for live fat sows outside the country prices had risen from £4 10s. to £7 10s. per cwt. dead weight or from £10 apiece inside the last four or five months.

That is the kind of thing we want. These people—dealers or dealing men, whatever you like to call them—have no subsidies. They are not sent out on any trade missions. They are handling £45 million worth of agricultural produce, finding a market for it, paying cash for it, and prompt cash, too. Here in Dublin there is one of the most competitive markets in Ireland. It seems as if you always have to come back to this House and to the Department of Agriculture to try to stifle that market because the whole idea is to do away with dealers. If there is no dealer to bid for the cattle, what will happen if there is no dealer there to bid for the pigs?

As I pointed out to the Minister, it can be seen what happened in the market, and I do not believe the Minister would be in favour of what this survey team have brought in at all. The Minister is as close to this as any of us and he could see this for himself. I want the Minister to see to it that no change will be made in the pig trade without its being brought to the notice of this House. Of course, there is the whole business that the reward for doing these things is a very important thing. The Minister, in his brief, did not like it. He said:

They appear to be a somewhat crude attempt to imitate protest meetings and marches which have taken place in some continental countries where radically different conditions prevail.

If the Irish farmers want to protest, or if any branch of Irish industry want to protest, they are perfectly entitled to do it in any orderly fashion they want. It is a sound bit of intolerance on the Minister's part to say that these farmers should not do that. They must do these things and they must do them now in the light of the green light which has been given to the people in the urban areas. Now that the Taoiseach has given the green light, will the Minister for Agriculture tell us he is prepared to give the green light to the farmers and that the farmers can stop making their applications to him for the adjustments that should be made in the various branches of the agricultural industry?

We must see to this so far as the dairying industry is concerned. Everybody is looking for better conditions in this country and they are right. The only man who cannot be emancipated is the dairy man, and I would say the dairyman's wife and the dairyman's daughter. They have to milk the eternal cow Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Christmas Day and Easter Sunday. They have to turn out and milk her. Their rewards are not commensurate with the awful conditions under which they have to work or the long hours they have to spend at it. I often heard my friends from the city say that the farmer should do this and the farmer should do that, and the person talking would not be working 25 hours a week. I have an enormous respect for the Irish farmer and for the efficiency of the Irish farmer. We are told, of course, that they will have to adopt new methods now or they cannot go on so far as production is concerned. That is good. At the same time, it is a mistake to discard sound old methods which proved themselves profitable over the years.

I was here last night listening to Deputy Meaney congratulating the Minister, and other Fianna Fáil Minister, on the work they did and on how the land is being improved as a result of the new manuring schemes. I do not know whether my memory is failing me or not but I was always under the opinion that the lime scheme was initiated by Deputy Dillon. There was a lime scheme — and I have checked on it — bringing in a couple of thousand tons of lime away back. When Deputy Dillon came in, we got down to the real business of liming the land. Then I heard Deputy Meaney say, to my astonishment, that he was complimenting a former Minister — not Deputy Dillon — on the advisory services he was making available.I was of the opinion that Deputy Dillon was the man who went all out on this. My memory does not fail me — I remember him over there in a storm of mockery and jeering from the Fianna Fáil speakers. Then Deputy Meaney talked about the wonderful scheme — it is delayed action — and the £7 10s. a farmer was bound to get now for his calf. His memory is very short. I have great respect for him, and I like him, but I could be very tough on him. I shall leave it at that.

I want to stick to the pig trade. We had a mission sent to Spain, with a flourish, to sell porkers. I am not sure of this, but twice I tried to get the Minister in the House on this. I was not able to get the real figure so I have to tell what I was told. I am told we shipped something like 8,000 porkers and lost £40,000. I know a few unfortunate pig buyers who got £10 apiece; they get no subsidies; they were not sent out on any special mission; they got it themselves. I am not against testing foreign markets or going for them but I submit to the Minister that this was not a good job, that the people who went out to investigate that market must have got some kind of price from the Spaniards. Was it the State that lost the £40,000 on this?

I was informed during the week that some time ago a consignment of very good cattle was sent to Germany. They had to be slaughtered on the boat and a lot of money was lost by the dealers, or the entrepreneurs who sent them out. I want to draw the Minister's attention to this. The Germans ran out on their cattle quota a few years ago. We are buying £10 million or £12 million worth of goods from the Germans and they are buying only £2 million worth from us. The time has come to talk to them about that. We are sometimes told the German market might not suit us, that the prices might not be right. Since we are such good customers of the Federal Republic, that nation should have the decency to allocate us a quota. If the people to whom they allocate it cannot fill it, then it could be thrown open to the trade.

Of course I realise, as I always did, that the English market is the great market, but it is always good to have a few other irons in the fire. The continental market is particularly good for our heavy cattle, our fat bullocks. It has often helped to steady the prices of cattle here when their buyers came to the Dublin Cattle Market or to markets and fairs down the country. Their bids have often helped to put a bottom in the market. I submit the Minister's officials should consult with the livestock dealers and ask them for their opinion on the prospects in various countries of our selling in them. In that way the Minister might find out where it would be profitable for us to attempt to trade, and if he found there was a wall against us in such countries, he could very quickly look up our mutual trading balances and say to such countries: "We shall have to do something about this."

I should like now to say something about the turkey market. When we were sitting over there, and when the British turkey market went bad, we had here during Question Time each evening interruptions and screams from Fianna Fáil Deputies sitting here. They were screaming at Deputy Dillon sitting over there, telling him he could control the market. I know the Minister cannot control the market.

I knew it then, too.

At the same time, the Minister must admit that there were then serried rows of Fianna Fáil men almost coming across the floor to assault Deputy Dillon.

I did not happen to be one of them, strange to say.

I did not make the accusation. The attack was led by Fianna Fáil men.

He had plenty of "gutties" to do it for him.

I never asked anybody to act the "gutty" for me in my life.

There are a number of matters in the Minister's opening statement which confuse me. In his references to the Common Market, which we are all anxious to join, he has this to say:

German farmers face perhaps the most difficult problems of all, being confronted with the prospect of a lowering of prices and drastic structural changes in their whole farming economy in order to conform to the requirements of the common agricultural policy of the European Economic Community.

I do not know what information the Minister has but I am sure it is reliable, and I wonder, in view of that statement of his, whether it might not be advisable for us to change our tune and stay with the man we whipped, John Bull, whose market seems to be the one everybody is fighting to get into?

The last point I should like to deal with is the sporting end of the Minister's Department, Bord na gCon. I drew the Minister's attention to this body several times during Question Time. The Minister is a hard man to hold during Question Time and he wriggled out of it when I first tackled him. I had another go at him and he did not have to wriggle out of it this time. The Ceann Comhairle did it to me that evening. Now is the time to get at the Minister.

I want to let the people know what happened when Bord na gCon were being set up and when they wanted managers. Any innocent Deputy would think that the normal thing for them would have been to issue an official advertisement to the type of newspapers who deal with this business. Such an advertisement might be in the form of a two-inch double column or a three-inch single column — but no. Buried among the small advertisements in the Irish Independent on 20th February, 1962, in the Situations Vacant column, appeared the following small advertisement:

Part-time managers required at at each of the following centres: Clonmel, Kilkenny, Dundalk, Mullingar, Navan, Thurles. Experience of accounts, staff control and handling of cash essential. Age 28-40. Remuneration attractive. Applications in own handwriting, with details, to Box 26335.

Only the select and the initiated knew where to find that advertisement. The ordinary John Citizen would never have found it. I consider that was a deplorable way in which to fill these positions. It created a closed borough. I asked the Minister for an explanation of that and I hope he will give it. It will be very hard to explain away that kind of conduct. That was a disgraceful thing.

I have not said anything about wheat or beet because there will be many people to speak about them. I have kept mainly to the subject of livestock and livestock products and to our most important crop, now that we have the support of the Taoiseach for it, grass. There was a title that used to be given to the former Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Paddy Hogan, the title of Minister for Grass. Grass is now of the utmost value to the nation, the food that can be used for feeding the bullock which can be exported without subsidy or any other assistance.

On Thursday, 5th September, at the National Grass Production Competition prize-giving at the Shelbourne Hotel, the Taoiseach said that for many years the products of our grasslands had been the sheet anchor of our export trade and that they constituted the best opportunity for increased export. There is Fianna Fáil policy again. It took them 30 years to learn that lesson.

The Minister is facing something very serious with the bacon survey. They have brought in their report and I would ask him to read the findings of the Prices Commission against the first Bacon Marketing Board. His officials can make it available to him, and they can point out the fact that when the pig trade was rationalised, the bacon curers were making excess profits. When I mentioned that I was howled down by the late Deputy Derrig, God rest him, who knew nothing about the pig trade. On that occasion the Prices Commission allowed the bacon curers a substantial profit and yet they took excess profits of £207,000 out of the unfortunate producers.

The Deputy has made that point already.

I have come to the conclusion that when you have something important to say, the more often you say it the better. This has not been said often enough, and I hope to say it again and again and will do so when the occasion arises.

When you look at farming in this country generally, you find that there are many different types. There are all the different sizes of farms, the owners of which all have their own particular system of working. There is a big variety of farming activities and when it comes to devising a policy of helping all of them, the Department had to think on a very broad basis in order to give help that would suit every type of farming.

When he spoke here in introducing this Estimate, the Minister said that £39 million was being poured into agriculture in the coming year. That is a very big slice of the national income — nearly 25 per cent. Agriculture is our biggest industry and one that has not being doing as well as many farmers would like. Naturally it has been getting the bigger share of the subsidies. Many people feel that they are getting an income only when they see it in the form of hard cash but our policy has been to give indirect subsidies so that the farmers will be able to compete in the Common Market when we get into it.

A few years ago there was trouble about our butter subsidies because we were giving direct subsidies to help our farmers to sell abroad. There was objection to that in England and also by the countries which supply butter to England. If we were doing that with all our other commodities, there will have to be a big change when we enter the Common Market. Agriculture is the slowest industry in which changes can be made. Changes can be made in other industries and made in three or four years, but any change the farmers make takes a long time to show results.

Changes cannot be made in agriculture overnight and one has to look very far ahead when making them. We have been giving indirect subsidies.In the case of fertiliser alone, one can see the tremendous increase in the amount being used. Farmers have learned that with cheap fertiliser, their incomes can increase. The results from phosphates and potash have been spectacular and there has been a big increase in the use of nitrogen fertiliser. The increase in its use over the past few years has been practically 90 per cent. The nitrogen is also a help to get crops growing, particularly in the older pastures.

Where nitrogen has been used, it has increased production in meadows and has brought about earlier ripening of meadows. It is also useful in hay-making.Nearly every year there will be at least four or five good sunny days in June when quite an amount of the meadow can be cut and when the food value is very high. The month of July has tended over the years to be showery and whereas the rest of the hay can be made up at that stage, most of it can be cut in June when there is a fine spell of sun-shine, as the records have proved. Manure has been giving results, and will over the years to come, on quite an amount of our grassland, and production will improve.

In that regard I would very much like to compliment the Minister on the £15 heifer subsidy. Since he announced it I have had a good deal of inquiries; it has been very well received and will produce the results. The Minister has been asked why he does not give it in respect of every heifer. It must be remembered we are looking for 1,500,000 extra cattle. Whether there is a subsidy or not, there will still be the normal number, maybe a slight rise, but in order to achieve an increase of the magnitude the Minister is seeking, this subsidy is offered as an incentive.

It must be borne in mind that we cannot import calves. Our raw material is here and the calves must be bred here. I am confident this heifer scheme will bring in the increased numbers required. It will have the desirable effect of increasing the price of heifers, the trade in which has been rather dull for the past year or two. There will be another desirable effect. There has been a good deal of criticism in the English market that a percentage of our store heifers going over there are in calf. Naturally if there is the possibility of getting £15, that heifer will be kept at home to produce the calf.

It is a very wise plan to increase the number of beef cattle. This is practically the only beef exporting country in western Europe. Once we get into that market, I would say we have a fair chance of getting results. To a large extent, beef that is used on the continent is cow beef. Our cattle have no chance of getting in there on account of the high tariff against us. Our price is right and once those tariffs come down, I believe the people in Europe will develop a taste for our Irish beef which is one of the best in the world. It is younger than that in countries like the Argentine and Australia and we have an advantage over most of these countries which export frozen beef, in that, first, it loses quite an amount of the flavour and secondly, the beef they produce is older. With the increase in living standards in Europe, there is a market for our cattle.

It has been reported in some of our newspapers in the past week that one of our advisers has said that it is impossible to reach this target of 1,500,000 cattle. I believe it is doing harm to say in regard to a scheme with such long-term benefits and which will produce such desirable results for the farming community that it will not succeed. We can take it the Department of Agriculture have gone into this thoroughly and we can expect to see the full results of it in ten or 12 years' time.

The grants for new buildings such as haysheds will also prove to be wise expenditure. It is amazing to see the number of haysheds that have sprung up in the past four or five years. That is the result of careful planning by the Department of Agriculture. The farmer is one of the first people to see whether something is a bargain or not. With labour getting more difficult to acquire, it is not as easy to build these hay ricks out in the haggard. Furthermore a hayshed is also useful for housing cattle. All these facilities will be needed for the increased number of cattle that will be produced in the future.

I welcome the broadminded idea of the Department in seeking the best possible breed of cattle for us. They brought in the Charollais and they are very careful not to let it out until they are certain it will suit the Irish conditions.They have to ensure that only the right type of cattle is used. We have seen the result of very bad planning in regard to the beef Shorthorn over the past 50 or 60 years. It is hardly necessary for me to mention that it became neither one thing nor the other; it became small and had none of the desired qualities. Sometimes breeding societies are inclined to get finicky about a particular type of animal.

Take the beef Shorthorns in Scotland, for example. I think you could even say the same thing about the present Aberdeen-Angus — that the number is too small for producing the cattle and that a vast growth is needed. We need early-maturing cattle at present.Nobody can have a broader outlook on this matter, without any vested interest, than the officials of the Department who are there to see what is best for the country. I welcome this trying out of new cattle and judging of results for themselves.

We are very fortunate that we live on an island. It is easy to keep out some of the diseases that are prevalent on the continent — foot and mouth disease, fowl pest, and so on.

Our Department can be congratulated on the good work they have been doing over the years in many spheres of agriculture. I turn now to the question of sheep. I feel there is a fair market for sheep in Europe. We have exported quite an amount of sheep to France this year and we have developed a good trade with Britain as well. I want to voice one or two criticisms. If anything, we have too many crossbreeds of sheep competing for foreign markets. I am aware that the Department are examining the position and are trying to find the best crosses. We can have at least three or four that will suit requirements. There is no use in trying to put a Galway ewe on the Donegal mountains, and so on. You must have breeds that will suit the location and climate and use the crossing to get a lamb that will be the nearest to what is required. The housewife has to be suited and we must try to produce something as near as possible to her requirements. With the experiments that are taking place, I hope that, in time, it will be possible to produce about three or four breeds for crossing which will be suitable for requirements at home and abroad.

We must try to produce the best pigs. We are competing with the best pig producers in the world — the Danes. They have been able to produce a live animal of exactly the size and shape they require, just as if it were a piece of furniture produced from a factory. When the British shopkeeper buys a side of Danish bacon, he knows the exact weight it will be, and so on. We must strive to achieve that target. The Danes have been working on all that for 50 years.

We have our pig-progeny testing stations. We have started late but we have a chance of competing on the British market. There is no use in trying to sell fat bacon across Europe or across Britain. There was a time when parts of the west of Ireland used to take quite an amount of fat bacon but that area is getting smaller even in our own country. The position is the same in Britain and will be the same on the European market.

We need to encourage the setting-up of co-operative pig-fattening stations. Pigs can be fattened there in large numbers. The feeding can be controlled so as to produce the Grade A and the Grade A Special bacon. Those fattening units have not the facilities to produce the bonhams. Nobody can provide the individual attention or produce bonhams as cheaply as the small farmer. He is able to give personal attention to the farrowing house. One might like to see very elaborate houses but still if what are in use are warm, then the fundamental requirement is there.

Over the years, the small farmer has been able to make a house that is warm for sows and he can produce the bonhams better than anybody else. It is very difficult to produce them in large numbers as efficiently as he is able to produce them on his farm. The trouble is that he has not the buildings or the capital to fatten the pigs because it is at that stage that the pig must have an exceptionally warm house and it takes an amount of capital for feeding from the eight to ten weeks' stage up to bacon weight. Therefore, the small farmer has a ready-made market for his bonhams with the fattening station.

At the other end of it, factories can cut their costs a great deal more. I know that at certain stages they could actually give as much as 10/- a cwt. more if they were sure of getting a regular supply of bacon. With a big number of fattening units, factories could get an even flow of pigs. Take, for example, a factory in Dublin. Possibly on a Monday a few pigs would come in; on Tuesday a little more because there might be a few fairs in the country. On Wednesday a huge supply comes forward which overflows to Thursday and there are some more on Friday. The difficulty is the irregularity.The factories have to keep the same number of men employed the whole time. It is necessary that the factories be kept going at full strength all the time. To a large extent, our competitors have achieved this desirable state of affairs. With the profit on pigs so small, the number are required and efficiency is essential.

From the time the pig is mated right up to the time it is killed, there must be efficiency to keep it going and to be able to produce the type of bacon that is needed on the export market. The pig end of it is achieved through management and feeding. Our Department of Agriculture are to be congratulated on the introduction of some very fine Landrace boars which can be used for crossing with our Large White sows. I feel our Large White sow is the basis we shall need because she will produce a bigger litter and is a better milker than the Landrace and, with the crossing, we shall get the grading and the type of pig that will increase the growth and fattening of our pigs. Every encouragement should be given to these large co-operative units throughout the country. The one dread the small farmer has is that when he produces pigs and bonhams, he will not be able to sell them. It is difficult to go from one fair to another and it is difficult to build up a trade for very small numbers.

I welcome the announcement that there is to be one agricultural inspector for every 800 holdings. This advisory service has been held up to some extent by the county committees of agriculture not providing the finance. In the eastern counties where a penny will bring in a pound, there has been some achievement in this regard but in the western counties where the penny does not bring in so much, they have not been so successful. In the next six months, there will be a big increase in the number of advisory agricultural inspectors, particularly in the west. The instructors should concentrate on the farm management angle rather than advising a farmer how to grow a field of wheat or grass. It is from the overall results that the farmer gets his income and it is no use advising him to grow corn or grass if he does not know how best to utilise that advice. With a good knowledge of farm management, he will be able to get the greatest benefit from his labours. They have been turning to this aspect in the past year but greater emphasis must be placed on it. I should like to congratulate the firms that have been running competitions and offering prizes for farm management. They are to be congratulated for encouraging farmers in this regard.

Bord Bainne have achieved a great deal of success over the past year in the marketing of milk and milk products.The idea of putting a brand name, "Kerrygold", on our product was a good one. It is something that will catch the housewife's eye when she is shopping. Fundamentally, all Irish butter is the same and it is only in this way that we will have a chance of achieving something and disposing of any surplus that may build up. You could never build up a trade in butter from one creamery or another and it has all to be sold as Irish butter.

The sale of our product should be encouraged in Africa where there are new, independent States and in which one commodity which is in short supply is milk. Milk either in powdered or some other form should have a market in these countries eventually. I hope that possibility is being explored.

It is a good thing that the butter is being sold all over the world. Granted that some of it is not getting a fancy price but when people acquire a taste for it, the price will go up. There was a time years ago when there was a good market in England for Irish butter but we lost that market because we could provide butter only in summertime and had not a constant supply to give them during the winter. The result was that people turned over to New Zealand or Danish butter in the wintertime and developed a taste for that butter which is quite different from our own butter. When we started to increase production after the war, we found that people in England were not too keen on our butter. On one or two occasions here we imported some Danish butter and the people objected strongly to it. It is the same with our butter in England. People's taste for it has to be developed. It is an extremely good product, one of the best we could ask for.

In regard to horticulture, the Sugar Company are to be congratulated on trying to develop a market. Horticulture can fit easily into the farming pattern, especially in the case of small farmers who can get a high income from a small amount of land. There is a market for horticultural products as can be seen from advertisements on television for various kinds of English and foreign soups and canned goods. With our climate and soil, we can produce the vegetables for these foods. As the standard of life rises in Europe, they will be looking more and more for instant foods, foods which can be made up in a very short space of time.

In Europe, more and more girls and women are living in flats. When they return from work, they need something which does not take long to cook, something prepackaged and ready prepared. The standard of living both in Britain and on the continent has been rising, and people are more and more demanding this type of handy, semi-luxury type food. More married women are now working, and they too, require ready-prepared and packaged foods. Although this is an extremely competitive market, in which some very large firms are participating, I believe we have the article and that we will succeed in getting our share of it. In addition, it is a line which leaves much room for development in the future.

As we cannot afford to leave any portion of a farm producing nothing, so also must we make every part of the country pull its weight. Every bit of land must be made to produce something. Even the mountain land must be brought in by producing sheep. I know that in this regard excellent results have been obtained in some places by the use of fertilisers, and we must encourage that development.The fencing scheme will bring beneficial results, particularly to the farmers in the west and in the mountainous areas.

The Agricultural Institute has done remarkably good work since it was set up. It has been channelling information to the advisory services and investigating every aspect of Irish agriculture. The only criticism I would make is that it has struck me that they have an extremely large acreage to carry on their work, and I wonder if they need all these farms to carry out their experiments. Most of their work is concerned with plots, and the acreage does look rather big.

In one or two places — London and Brussels, for instance — we have agricultural counsellors attached to our embassies. I feel that more of our embassies should have these counsellors. If you have a man on the spot with an agricultural background, he will have a better idea of the situation than an official without an agricultural background, and he will be able to find possible outlets for our agricultural produce.

The results achieved under the Bovine TB Eradication Scheme can only be described as amazing. They were brought about as a result of co-operation between the farmers and the Department. It was no mean feat to be able to clear in four or five years 20 of our counties, the areas in which was the main movement of cattle. I feel that within the next couple of years we will be able to get the same results in the south.

Very good work has been done under the Land Project over the years, but I often feel there is unnecessary delay in the case of joint schemes in getting them out to the people concerned.The Boyne drainage is going on in my constituency at present. They have to consult with the Board of Works so that their bridges and levels will be the same as those of the Board of Works when the Board comes to do the Boyne arterial drainage. My only little criticism, therefore, is that I feel some of the joint schemes could be hurried up. It usually means a number of farms cannot be drained until this work is done. I know they do get preferential treatment to a certain extent but, even so, it is taking quite a while.

Bord na gCon have achieved quite a lot in the few years they have been in existence. They have secured a ready market for the type of dog practically unsaleable a few years ago — the moderate animal, which was always very hard to sell. They have been able to secure markets in Italy and America in addition to the existing market in Britain. Greyhound racing is the small man's sport. He cannot think of having horses. But if he can have a bit of fun with greyhounds and make some money at the same time, more power to him. Bord na gCon have succeeded in removing any little abuses which existed, and the industry is now going extremely well.

In conclusion, I wish the Minister well in his new heifer scheme. I think the £15 subsidy will achieve the results he hopes for in the years ahead.

It is very often difficult to follow the mental processes of this Government. It was only last April the Taoiseach was assuring us, at Column 318 of Volume 212, No. 2, of the Official Report in regard to the turnover tax, that it would result in little, if any, increase in the cost of living. He said:

Deputies have asked what will be the effect of this tax upon the retail price level. That is not easy to forecast.Indeed, the effect on prices is far more likely to be exaggerated than otherwise. If the full amount of the tax is passed on in respect of all prices, if the general price level goes up by the amount of the tax, then an increase of around two per cent may be counted on, allowing that the tax does not apply to things like rents, transport services and so on.

At that time we prognosticated that the impact of the turnover tax would be very severe on the cost of living and the consequences that would flow therefrom.

Despite the Taoiseach's optimistic forecast and in spite of the White Paper Closing the Gap which he published in February, 1963, we are now informed that it is necessary, in order to maintain social justice, that there should be a substantial increase in industrial wages. That is probably true as a result of the increased cost of living, but it is noteworthy that when the Government were trying to freeze wages and incomes and published Closing the Gap, they based their claim for the necessity to freeze wages on the graph published on page 4 called “Diagram 1: Indices of Weekly Earnings per Wage-earner Engaged in Manufacturing Industries between 1958 and 1962.” They described the gap they were concerned to close as being the difference between the weekly earnings of the industrial worker and the output by wage earners. The wage earnings figure stood at 128.4 and the output figure at 117.9. They said this gap of 10.5 points constituted a menace to the economic future of the country.

The latest available figures, related to the end of June, show that the output of wage earners is now estimated to be 123 and the weekly earnings of the industrial worker are estimated to be 132. The gap is still approximately the same as it was when the White Paper was published. But now we are told by this Government that what constituted an urgent and immediate menace to the economic future of the country in February is all right and the Taoiseach calls for the ninth round of wage increases.

Just as the Taoiseach says, whatever our economic calculations were last February, whatever my prognostications were last April, the cost of living has gone up to such an extent that a ninth round of wage increases in industrial wages is inevitable. Has anybody here adverted to the fact that, if the increase in the cost of living is such as to force the Government to swallow their own words, their prognostication and warnings in the sphere of industrial earnings and to concede that a ninth round is urgently necessary, if social justice is to be done, there is no proposal anywhere to make any corresponding provision for the thousands of small, self-employed farmers who have to meet exactly the same increased cost of living and who are apparently to have no adjustment in their revenues to meet the extra burden?

I suggest that the net result of the situation into which we are drifting now is that the gap which was wide enough, between the standard of living of the farmers and that of the industrial workers before the Government's latest excursion, is now to be further widened. For a country whose principal natural resources consist of 12 million acres of arable land, I suggest that is a very grave development in our circumstances. One of the consequences is that large areas of the country are becoming denuded of population simply because the traditional pattern of life which has constituted the foundation of our kind of society, a property-owning agricultural community, is being destroyed by the fact that this differential in the standard of living they are permitted to enjoy and the standards of the residents in towns and cities is becoming so wide that no young people will undertake the responsibilities of agriculture in the future, to the growing detriment of the principal natural asset we have, the land. That is one of the strange and disastrous by-products of the Government's economic policy but it is one the House should not lose sight of because I think it will create very serious additional problems over and above those that already afflict us.

My experience has taught me that in seeking to expand agricultural output, the most powerful encouragement the Government or anybody can provide is to ensure a profitable outlet for increased production. When I was Minister for Agriculture, it was certainly my experience that any line of production which yielded a profit would very quickly get the output from the farmers. Only when they were confronted with the prospect of producing at a loss did that output tend to dwindle. I am convinced that the present situation of the agricultural industry urgently demands as it has done for some time, an effective advisory service for all farmers.

I heard Deputy Meaney speak yesterday about the immense success that had attended what he was pleased to describe as the intensive agricultural advisory service provided for his creamery area in Cork. There are few Deputies who did more to prevent an adequate service being established in this country than Deputy Meaney. I am convinced that the provision of such a service constitutes the keystone of enduring progress in the agricultural industry in future. I believe the present Minister has come to realise that, but foolishly, and for purely political reasons, he baulks at the steps necessary to give effect to such a scheme.

The basis of such a scheme should be to relate individual agricultural advisers each with his own particular territory. Nothing is more discouraging for a man acting in the capacity of agricultural adviser in rural Ireland than be given an indeterminate area with very little prospect of being able to cover it adequately and never having the satisfaction of being able to show the result of his exertions in the community or area which he is charged to serve. I have always believed that the proper basis for an adequate agricultural advisory service is the rural parish, which is the natural social unit in our rural society. There are 800 such parishes in this country. I believe that if we initiated a scheme based on one agricultural adviser to every three parishes, it would provide one adviser for approximately an average of 1,000 farms each.

As the scheme developed, I believe we would find it eminently worthwhile to expand it in most areas in the country to the point of having one adviser for every parish, which would be the equivalent of approximately 300 farms. We could start tomorrow with 300 advisers handling three parishes apiece and we could aim ultimately at having about 800 qualified officers in the field when we reached the stage of having one for every 300 farms.

No money could be better invested than money invested in such a scheme and, until such a scheme is in operation, there will be no effective communication to the farmers of the growing volume of valuable research which is becoming available from the Agricultural Research Institute, which we set up during our last term of office. It is a tragic thing to see the volume of material that is being made available by the Agricultural Research Institute, both from its own resources and from its mobilisation of information from other institutes abroad, and to realise that the people for whom that information is discovered, or accumulated, are not getting it because there is not an adequate service to bring it to them.

Whether that service is provided by the Department of Agriculture in collaboration with the county committees of agriculture does not very much matter, but certainly there ought to be a common purpose in the service. There ought to be effective power in the Minister for Agriculture to see that the service works properly and there ought to be effective power in the Minister to ensure that, wherever the service is operating, it is operating as it should operate adequately to serve the people for whom it is intended.

I have always believed that, until you can relate the service of an adviser to a certain area for which he is himself responsible, and from time to time review the success or failure of his efforts, you can hope for no satisfactory development of an advisory service in this country. Now, when I speak of reviewing his efforts, I do not mean going to inspect the work done only for the purpose of finding fault. I think that for a man to be working hard to achieve increased production and better standards in an area which he is serving to reach the conclusion that nobody gives a hoot whether he works well or ill is the most discouraging thing that can happen to a man. I think if an adequate supervision were available, and where good work was done, a man knew it would be appreciated, that would do a great deal to help in securing an effective distribution of the amount of information without which our farmers cannot effectively exploit the land on which they live.

We have reached the conclusion, which, I am convinced, is right, that there is not the least use giving advice to small farmers designed to enable them to expand production if the small farmers to whom the advice is given cannot afford to take it. Anyone who has had any experience of small farmers in this country knows their constitutional reluctance to enter into credit liabilities, particularly when interest charges are involved, and I am convinced, as my Party are convinced, that it would be well worth while, if we are seriously intending to make an effective break-through in expanded agricultural production in this country, to invite the small farmers to enter a scheme wherein there would be made available to them credit up to £1,000 interest-free for schemes of increased production prepared in consultation with the agricultural adviser operating in their district.

I am shocked to discover the Minister for Agriculture, speaking on behalf of the Department of Agriculture, in- dulging in the idiotic calculations which are set out on page 10 of his manuscript. I must not, Sir, go behind the Minister; the Minister speaks for his Department here and therefore I must attribute to him personally the idiotic calculations set out on that page. He speaks of 200,000 farmers, each borrowing £1,000, the total cost of which would be in 25 years £188,667,000. These are figures which are becoming for an arithmetic class of the first or second standard; they are not worthy of a Minister for Agriculture in this House.

The facts are that we have in this country about 250,000 farmers between five and 150 acres, of whom 120,000 have less than 30 acres. In fact, I suppose if all the farmers borrowed on the same day a sum of £1,000 each, the likelihood of difficulties arising would be formidable; but, in fact, if the sum of £8 million it is now proposed to invest in a nitrogenous fertiliser factory were invested in a revolving fund for the purpose I have in mind, plus the lending resources of the joint stock banks and the Agricultural Credit Corporation, there would be no strain whatever on the available credit in this country. Every farmer would have to prepare a scheme for increased production in consultation with his agricultural adviser.

I see the qualifications.

This has been printed and shouted about. It has been explained a thousand times. It seems to me a rational proposal that, if you want increased production, you have got to plan to get it; and, if your adviser advises you how to get it, as I envisage the problem, there is no use the adviser giving the farmer advice that the farmer cannot afford to take. I want the adviser to be in a position to say: "If you are prepared to work with me to get that increased production on your own holding, to the advantage of the national output and of your own family, I am in a position to recommend you for the credit necessary to achieve it and, what is more, you will get a loan interest free."

Is there anything extravagant or unreasonable in that proposition? If we are prepared to lend large-scale industry almost unlimited sums of money, not to speak of substantial grants running into hundreds of thousands of pounds, is it not reasonable to say to a small farmer, who is prepared to embark on a plan to expand his production on his small holding: "If that costs you £300, £400, £500, £600 or £1,000, I, the agricultural adviser, am not only prepared to show you how to do it but to assure you that you can get the credit there for it and pay it back in instalments, without being charged interest on it?" Is that unreasonable in the light of our dealings with large industrial enterprises in this country? I cannot see that it is. On the contrary, I am convinced it is right, and if we are serious in wishing to keep our people on the land and give them some hope or prospect of bridging, at least a part of the gap, which separates their average income to-day from that of the industrial worker, there is no other way in which we can do it.

I absolutely refuse to accept the Fianna Fáil philosophy that the only way of preserving society in this country is to drive the people off the land and consolidate the holdings. That was Lord Lucan's way. Do not let us forget that the man who first suggested that in this country was Lord Lucan and he came to be known in this country as the Great Exterminator.Our people fought with their bare hands on the Lucan estate and all the resources of the British Government were brought against them, until, in the heel of the hunt, our people drove Lord Lucan out of the country instead of Lord Lucan driving out our people.

The resources of the Government today are even more formidable than those Lord Lucan had available to him. I am no more in favour of driving the people off the land to-day than my grandfather was in favour of doing it 100 years ago. There is no greater illusion than to abandon the land, or our people who live on it, in the belief that we have got to follow the example of certain other countries to-day, who have abandoned agriculture in favour of an exclusive concern for industrial pursuits. We have something infinitely precious in this country. We have a way of life and a system of society which we ought to treasure and it is largely founded on the property-owning farmers of Ireland, who are responsible to nobody but themselves for the administration of the land which is vested in them.

I want to say again that despite the discreditable, dishonest, and, in my submission, disreputable calculations, which the Minister for Agriculture has disgraced himself by producing for the edification of poor old Deputy Burke of North Dublin, the suggestion we intend to implement, by way of provision of credit for farmers who are prepared to undertake schemes to increase production, in association with the advisory services which we intend to establish, is a sound scheme, if we are serious in our desire to enable the 250,000 small farmers of this country to participate in, and to expand, production to the degree necessary to make a real break-through to agricultural expansion.

Furthermore, I am convinced that we can have no enduring success in an effort to expand agriculture on the basis of our property-owning farming community, unless we are prepared to help the farmers to build for themselves houses which will bear some relation in the accommodation made available to that of the houses provided for industrial workers by the municipalities of our various towns and cities. The plain truth is that, in respect of a great number of houses in rural Ireland, time slipped by and these country dwellers are living to-day in the houses in which their great grandparents were living 100 years ago. There have been adjustments and improvements but, substantially, the accommodation and structure of the houses relates closely to what was there 100 years ago.

That is obviously an undesirable situation in the circumstances in which we now find ourselves. The conservative temperament of our people, isolated until relatively recently from contact with modern developments, made that situation acceptable. Now, with television in every country village and our people coming more and more in contact with modern methods of living, the plain fact is girls will not marry into old-fashioned country houses with none of the modern amenities available therein.

How are we now to resolve this problem? It is not difficult. All that is necessary to do is to say to any small farmer in the country: "If you want to build a new house — not necessarily because your old house is inadequate but because it is out of date — make out the plan, extract from the local authority the housing grant you are entitled to and from the Department of Local Government the housing grant you are entitled to, and indent upon the Land Commission for the balance of the cost, in the knowledge that that balance will be added to the land annuity," in the same way as an annuity would be added to the land annuity under Land Project B before the Fianna Fáil Government took it off.

Thank God.

I would not expect Deputy Allen to know a lot about that.

I know it very well all over my own county.

I hope you will get up and say something about it.

I believe such a scheme would make it possible for a very large number of farmers to build themselves decent houses.

When you would have all these payments on the farmer's repayable order, you would shake him with the size of it.

If anybody did not want to build a house, he need not build it. But I think the Minister will have seen the design of the Land Commission house, which was shown downstairs and I think it is possible to say that after the appropriate grants were received from the local authority and the Department of Local Government, the purchase of such a house could be achieved by the expenditure of 15/- or £1 a week. Any farmer who did not want a good house need not avail of it but at least we would be in a position to say to many of them——

He could get an advance from the county council if he wanted to build a new house on more or less the same basis.

The Minister's argument one minute is that I am making an improvident suggestion to overburden the farmer and the next minute is that he can get that grant already.

If he wants to.

I want to provide a scheme whereby we can say to every small farmer in the country: "You have the machinery available; you now can build your house." The Minister admits he knows that very well, so these representations are wholly fallacious, calculated to deceive people like Deputy Burke and nobody else. On the other hand, he says these can be achieved. The fact remains they are not.

If these are to be relieved of these charges——

In regard to houses, I do not think that necessity arises. The persons who build the houses can be asked to pay for them in the ordinary, normal way.

I want now to refer to the Government's anticipations in connection with the Second Programme for Economic Expansion. There is nothing more corrupt or rotten than fraud. This document, the Second Programme for Economic Expansion, is very largely a fraud. Its origin is very well known to me. I have here a document which was published by the OECD early this year called Policies for Economic Growth. It so happens that I was charged with the responsibility of presenting this document on behalf of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to the Council of Europe at Strasbourg last March. It represents a commentary on a decision taken on 16th and 17th November, 1961, when the first Ministerial Council of the OECD agreed on the desirability of establishing a target for economic growth. We had set, as a collective target in respect of the decade 1960 to 1970, a growth in real gross product of 50 per cent for the 20 Member Countries together.

That document has been in existence since the beginning of this year. It was, in fact, published on 28th November, 1962. What has actually happened is that the Government in their Budget imposed the turnover tax and discovered a reaction so violent that they made up their minds that some diversionary stratagem must be presented in order to get the public mind off the turnover tax and its inevitable consequences.So somebody in the Department of Finance was charged to get out quickly a Second Programme for Economic Expansion. What happened was that they took this policy programme of the OECD adopted by the Member Countries in 1961, and proceeded to fit in whatever figures were expedient in order to present us with the prospect of our achieving that goal. When you come to examine the figures in detail, you find that very few of them are of a concrete character. They are very good aspirations until you come to page 28, where the Second Programme for Economic Expansion sets out:

Cattle, live and dead, is our principal farm product, both in total output and in export value; and it is also, fortunately, the product for which increased export demand is most likely.

So we have travelled a long way since the days when they were slaughtering the calves and selling them for the price of their skins, 10/- apiece. We have now suddenly discovered that cattle, live and dead, are our principal farm product, both in total output and in export value. There was a time when a bullock in this country used to qualify for the term "traitor". We are all weary of listening to the Fianna Fáil dirge about the bullock, the stick and the dog. What a wonderful conversion is here, but what havoc has been wrought in the meantime.

The programme goes on:

A major aim of the second programme is to raise the output of cattle from 1,046,000 in 1960 (1,065,000 in 1962) to 1,500,000 in 1970 — an increase of 454,000 or 43 per cent, almost all of which will be for export.

The Minister for Agriculture says that is perfectly easy; I say it is mathematically impossible. Let the event see who is right.

Do not misquote me. I said the weapons are there. The stock is there and there is no physical, no technical or other obstacle of that nature to our achieving that goal.

I say it is pure eyewash and eyewash of a most malignant character because nothing is more easy than the tendency that has always manifested itself in Fianna Fáil, to try to prove the farmers are lying down on the job. The idea is to set a goal which every rational person connected with the livestock trade in this country knows to be impossible of realisation, and then to say the farmers do not pull their weight.

It never was a tendency of mine.

Wait a minute. This is not the first Programme for Economic Expansion we have had. The Programme for Economic Expansion published in November, 1958, at page 15, had this statement:

The objective of the policy will be to increase cow numbers progressively to at least 1,500,000 in 1964.

That was the objective set in the White Paper then, at a time when the bovine tuberculosis scheme was just under way. Of course we have failed, by nearly 200,000, to achieve that objective.

Is it any harm to have an objective and to strive to attain it?

No harm at all, provided it is honest and attainable, but it is most injurious to set programmes which everyone in the country knows to be fraudulent. It knocks the heart out of anybody who really wants to help. I want to see, and every other rational person in the country wants to see, the livestock population expand indefinitely to the utmost capacity of the land to carry it, and when I see the Minister for Agriculture solemnly nodding his head in assent to that proposition, it is hard to keep my patience because it is not so long since he and his colleagues were describing livestock advocacy as violent treason.

Now, now.

That is the truth.

Cattle are as much in my bones as in the Deputy's, and have been for generations.

I do not think there is anything to be gained by adverting to the fact that the Minister has been a cattle dealer. It is greatly to his credit if he was. Neither is anything to be gained by adverting to the fact that I have been associated with the land all my life. We are speaking here as representatives of our respective policies and I do not think I am uttering any libel on Fianna Fáil when I say that as a result of 16 years of their administration, when I took office first as Minister for Agriculture, the people were getting less for a calf than they were getting for an old hen. The first thing I did as Minister for Agriculture was to close down a factory in Millstreet which had been set up for the purpose of slaughtering calves for the purpose of disposing of their skins.

That was at the end of 16 years of Fianna Fáil, when the livestock industry of this country was nearly wrecked. It still remains obvious that every rational person wants to see the cattle population, the sheep population and the pig population raised to the maximum figures the land is capable of carrying. Insofar as Fianna Fáil have undergone a conversion, I welcome it, but let us set ourselves realistic goals if we are to set ourselves goals at all, because we shall be only deceiving ourselves otherwise. Let us attempt what can be done and thus secure the support of everybody to ensure that it will not be followed by a period of disillusionment and that nobody will be given an opportunity of pointing the finger of scorn at the agricultural community and tell them that they did not reach the objectives set for them in the attempt to expand to gross national productivity.

I now come to consider the first proposal the Minister put before us of a grant of £15 per heifer. As far as I understand the scheme, it is that given a basic year, this year, according to how many cattle you have tested under the bovine T.B. eradication scheme, if you have six cows and add two cows in 1964, you are entitled to a grant of £30 from the Government. If you had 20 cows in 1963 and buy 40 heifers and let them in on the land to calve, then you get £600. Thereafter the first man's basic rate will be eight and he will get no further grant unless he increases that number and the other man would now acquire a basic rate of 60 cattle and could get no further grant unless he had more than 60 cows and heifers on the land.

I think that will benefit some of the larger farmers who have the land on which to put the heifers and who can afford to buy them. I do not think it will do much for the small farmer. He cannot afford to buy the heifers and he will not have the land to increase his stock particularly if he is a good small farmer who is already keeping the maximum number of livestock his land can carry. It has another aspect. It will be a great hardship on the six or eight cow man at present who sees the man with 20 cows buying those 40 heifers and calving them and who realises that not only is there now within reach of his relatively wealthy neighbour a grant 30 times as great as he himself can get but also that the immediate consequences are that the milk output of his large neighbour is going to add materially to the total exportable surplus of milk products which is at present being financed as to one-third by a levy on the milk cheque of the small farmer as well as the big farmer.

Deputy Donegan pointed out on behalf of this Party that since this milk levy scheme was adumbrated, a radical change has taken place in the export of butter. When this House agreed to the proposal that the export bounty on creamery products would be financed as to two-thirds by the Exchequer and one-third by the producer, the average export bounty payable was in the region of £10 per cwt. The average export bounty payable at present, according to the most recent date for which we have figures, is about £5 per cwt. When the Exchequer accepted liability for two-thirds of the subsidy, that meant they undertook to find approximately £6 6s. per cwt for every cwt exported. The producer was required to find the balance.

Now the total subsidy is substantially less than the two-thirds which the Government undertook to pay. We are going to introduce a heifer scheme which will increase the total volume of butter going out. Is it reasonable to say, now that the position has so radically altered, to the smaller farmer that his milk levy will have to bear the expense of exporting the larger output of the larger farmer who has got a grant of £600 for his 40 heifers? I suggest that the Minister should consider the position of the small farmer and that it is not unreasonable to say that if the industrial worker is to be invited to participate in the ninth round of wage increases, and if the large farmer is to have virtually unrestricted access to the heifer subsidy scheme, the burden of the milk levy should be taken off the shoulders of the small farmer.

I suggest to the Minister that if he comes to the House with proposals to that end, he will find a great measure of support. The sooner it is done, the better it will be. There is time now to do it in preparation for the new milk season which opens in February or March. I suggest to the Minister that it would be an intolerable situation that the present income gap between the small farmer and the industrial worker should be further widened over and above what it is already. This cancellation of the levy, which would be no further burden on the Exchequer, would be some small contribution towards closing that gap.

People often forget, when they become too intoxicated by the neverending talk about industrial exports and all that we are doing by tax exemptions, exemptions in income tax and corporation profits tax, towards helping industrial exports, the relative importance to our economy of our agricultural and industrial exports. In the first six months of this year, live animal exports represented approximately £25¼ million. Foodstuffs represented £28.5 million. That gave a total of £53.75 million for foodstuffs and live animals. The total value of manufactured goods exported amounted to £20.4 million. In respect of live animals and foodstuffs, there were very substantial increases as compared with last year which, in fact, operated to keep the balance of trade in some control. In the first six months of this year, the increase in the value of live animals and foodstuff exports was approximately £7 million.

Let us not forget that in the whole economic picture of this country agriculture is more than pulling its weight so far as exports are concerned and it is urgently important that we should continue to push in that direction.I agree with the Minister for Agriculture that one of the main hopes we have for enduring increased exports is the livestock industry. I use the word "enduring" deliberately because in connection with the figures I have given for total industrial exports for the first six months of the year, one item of £1.2 million is in respect of a ship that we sold to Canada. We cannot sell a ship every month and some of the ships we sell cost us a great deal of money before we find a buyer. But livestock exports and food exports, I agree with the Minister, have every prospect of enduring and expanding, if we can produce enough of them.

I want to add my voice to the anxieties expressed by Deputy Thaddeus Lynch in regard to what is proposed for the pig industry. Nothing is worse than a long period of uncertainty.The rumour circulating is that there is some plan in somebody's mind designed to achieve two ends: one, the virtual elimination of the pig jobber and the other, a material reduction in the number of small bacon factories in the country. We have been through all this before. We had a scheme 25 years ago in which we were going to rationalise the bacon industry and compensate a number of small bacon curers in order to induce them to get out of the business. A considerable number of them took their compensation and got out. I spent my time afterwards, when I was Minister for Agriculture, dealing with urgent applications from some of these people to get back in again, and a very difficult problem it was to deal with.

I do not think it is a good thing to be closing down small bacon factories. Some of them are as efficient as, and even more efficient, than, some of the larger factories. Far from closing down small bacon factories, which have a very valuable local labour content, my objective would be to try to maximise supplies in order that the capacity of all these factories would be fully exhausted.

I quite agree with helping some of the older factories who are prepared to put some of their own money into the business of modernising themselves. Some of our Irish bacon factories are antediluvian in their equipment. However, I remember when I was Minister for Agriculture, one of the most antediluvian factories in this country was under the strongest possible pressure, as a matter of high urgency, to reform its procedures, as being a factory most urgently in need of modernisation, and yet from my personal knowledge, I can say that the bacon produced there commands a readier market than any other factory in Ireland. Those two facts are hard to reconcile but there they were. Nevertheless from the aspect of enduring international trade, there is no doubt that in the long run factories in this country must be modernised and brought up to date, and any help we can give them is very well given.

I demur at a proposal to eliminate all the small factories and to carry on a process of rationalisation which will do a great deal of harm, create unemployment for the people who work in the small factories, cause immense inconvenience for the producers who live near these factories and who at present can effect deliveries without having to worry about transport of their produce from the farm to remote factories, and yet gives us no guarantee that the end-product of the industry will be any better for the elimination of what are generally known as small factories.

Secondly, I want to suggest to the Minister that some element of competition in this business is good. Pig jobbers have been engaged in this work for generations and serve a very useful purpose. No pig jobber will buy a pig unless he knows some place where it can be profitably disposed of. They act in the Dublin market and elsewhere as a constant check on any attempt at combination to pull down the price payable to farmers for pigs.

We all know that under the guarantee system of prices for pigs set up by myself when I was Minister for Agriculture, farmers are guaranteed a minimum price for Grade A and Grade A1 pigs. If a pig does not fall into one of these expensive categories, the loss can be absolutely crushing. There is no doubt that the pig jobber has operated to alleviate very materially the loss in which a small farmer would be involved if his pig were graded B or was otherwise outside the categories of A and A1. For that reason, the Minister should be very slow to approve any proposal which would operate to eliminate the pig jobbers from the life of the country. I am convinced they are discharging a useful function and constitute a most valuable check on any attempt to exploit the producer.

I mentioned before, and I am sorry there is no reference to it in the Minister's statement, that I believe the expansion of pig production could be very materially contributed to by the development of pig-fattening farms, preferably associated with co-operative enterprises. With the present stiff grading of pigs, the fattening of pigs has become a highly skilled operation, requiring specialised types of housing. I do not say it is impossible to finish a pig without that kind of equipment but it is a rather haphazard venture to try to get the top grade for pigs without modern housing of a certain design and without special feeding procedures which require a considerable degree of technical skill.

I am greatly attracted by the suggestion, which I believe is operating on a limited scale in certain areas, that co-operative societies, creamery societies or similar societies purchase progeny-tested sows and issue these to small farmers who are prepared to buy them, and provide, further, the service of a progeny-tested boar so that the small farmers will produce the bonhams and that the central station stands ready to accept the bonhams at 10 or 14 weeks' old, according to the practice of the district, at a guaranteed price of 2/-, 2/2d. or 2/4d. per lb., whatever the special circumstances of the enterprise will allow.

In my judgment, if farmers are given the opportunity of producing pigs with the certainty of a rapid turnover and a guaranteed outlet, at a prearranged price, we shall get a vastly increased output of pigs. We are anxious to ensure that that increase or the bacon produced therefrom will be of a standard calculated to command the best market in the international markets in which we must trade. The only way of providing that would be to ensure that the co-operative authority would make available progeny-tested pigs either from our own resources or imported from Northern Ireland or elsewhere. There is no use in providing progeny-tested sows if we are not prepared to make available to the farmers keeping them the services of a progeny-tested boar. This procedure would result in a very valuable expansion of the pig population and in a very substantial expansion of our bacon exports in which I believe we should be able more and more effectively to compete with alternative suppliers of the British market.

It is an interesting thing that we have lived to see the day when the world price for barley is beginning to pass out the domestic guaranteed price for barley. I understand now that the barley produced in this country is probably costing less than barley of similar quality purchased on the international markets. There was a time when I doubted if that could ever be so. I rejoice, then, that the price of feeding barley which has been fixed in strict relation to the price payable for pigs is now virtually an economic price. I cannot persuade myself that in that situation there is not scope for a vast expansion in the production of feeding barley in this country. That provides a great prospect for tillage of an economic kind in this country. It provides today not only a virtually ideal raw material for the bacon industry but it is now reasonable to anticipate, with the growing international market that is developing in grains and cereals, that it might well become a primary export itself.

I suggest to the Minister that in view of the climatic conditions in which we operate we ought to promote to the limit of our capacity — and how readily we could do it if we had an adequate advisory service operating in the country — the growth of feeding barley, bearing in mind that the climatic conditions of this country which can so frequently be fatal to a wheat crop are relatively insignificant in regard to the barley crop which, even when it is weathered by adverse weather conditions, can still be saved and profitably used as coarse grain for animal feeding.

I heard, in the course of the Minister's introductory observations the announcement that he had proposals in mind to set up an island quarantine station at Spike Island. Have the international regulations in regard to quarantine been radically altered? That concept was repeatedly considered by me when I was Minister for Agriculture.

I suppose everybody who becomes Minister for Agriculture asks that question the first time he comes up against the habitual delay that exists in quarantine stations in Liverpool or in the other principal ports in Britain. On all occasions I was told that our disease-free status depended on certain internationally-recognised regulations which imposed upon us the obligation to notify the international authority and all other Governments with whom we have veterinary agreements of the occurrence of any outbreak of certain diseases within our territory.

I was told that if we had a quarantine station on any of the islands off our shore and if there did turn up a case of foot and mouth disease, rabies or one of the other notifiable veterinary diseases in animals, it would deprive us of our invaluable status as a disease-free country which is at present of incalculable value to us in that it gives us access to a number of countries from which the exports of all other continental countries in the way of livestock are excluded. We have access to these markets because we have the record of long periods of immunity from certain internationally-recognised veterinary diseases.

Do we stand in danger of losing that valuable qualification if we set up, even on an island, within our own territory a quarantine station where outbreaks of these diseases might in fact take place? I apprehend we should and, if we do, then I think the game is not worth the candle, and this proposal to set up a quarantine station on an island within our own territory should be reviewed.

I should much rather seek to buy land on the Isle of Man or on the mainland of Great Britain and set up a quarantine station there if that could be brought within the scope of the veterinary regulations. I can conceive of veterinary regulations permitting a kind of free port into which you bring your cattle and there keep them immune from all contact with outside animals or people for the appropriate period and then ship them on to Ireland, thus providing us with our own quarantine accommodation either in Great Britain or on the Isle of Man. I should much prefer that arrangement than to put it in our own territory if that involved the risk of losing our disease-immunity reputation.

I cannot dismiss from my mind the belief that the present Minister for Agriculture is not a very effective figure in office. I assume he is doing his best but I do not think much of it. In common with a number of his colleagues, the greatest service he could do the country would be to join them in a protracted period of Opposition in this House, if he did not elect to return to his green pastures in County Cavan and make up his mind that he had done enough damage for one lifetime to permit of his resting for the remainder of his days. I am sure he must be the worst Minister for Agriculture that any country in Western Europe has had to endure but he could do the country one great final service and that is to quit — and I exhort him to do that as soon as may be.

It is extraordinary that the minds of speakers on the opposite side always wander back, particularly to 1934. If the entire programme they would set out on if they had a chance of getting into power at present is based on what they tried to build up then, there would be a very bleak outlook for the nation. I noted in particular the attempts being made by Deputy Lynch to cover the period back to 1932, to what he termed "the year of the flood". If the national upsurge and tide of anger which led the people to turn out the Government of the day can be called a flood, the Deputy aptly described 1932 as the year of the flood. All the speakers on the opposite side halted their backward march at the year 1932 and made no effort to cover the years before that, the events which led up to 1934 and the slaughter of calves brought about by an attempt by England to enforce the economic stranglehold which she was trying to get on our nation.

I will take Deputy Lynch and the other speakers back further than 1932 but first I should like to correct a statement made by Deputy Lynch. He said that 700,000 pigs were exported in 1932 and when I asked him the price, he said that it was £5. 10. per cwt. The actual price for pigs in 1931 was 53/- per cwt and that can be seen in Table 233 of the Statistical Abstract, 1933. That shows the value of statements emanating from the far side, wild statements which have no foundation in fact and which do not cover the disastrous years preceding 1932. I have a clear recollection of returning from England in October 1931 and finding at Killorglin fair, on 18th November, people taking their pigs home because they could not sell them, even though the price was 30/- a cwt., live weight.

I can go back further, to the years 1924 to 1927 when it was my business to know the conditions that existed in a certain trade and when butter was being sold at 4d a lb. and when we were only producing less than half of what we are producing today. We still had to export two-thirds of it because the people could not afford to buy it in the years which Deputy Lynch and other speakers are carefully avoiding, the years that led to the stringent hair-shirt policy of the Government of that day, the Cumann na nGaedheal Government from which that Party springs, and which brought about the disastrous result in 1929 and 1930 of 1/- being taken off the old age pensioners.That was the economic progress that Party were trying to promote. They were ably backed by alien and royalist forces to try to keep the position that existed even before the fight for independence.

The people who propagated that kind of economy stated in 1934 that the Bord na Móna scheme and every other scheme of national importance was haywire, that the Government were mad, throwing money down the drain, although they were the schemes which saved us during the war and brought national wealth. Now the people on the opposite side are trying to latch on to these schemes and trying to do bigger and better than ever. They are entitled to do that but at least we can lay a certain amount of claim to the fact that those schemes were initiated by the people in 1932 when they got rid of the policies that existed and demanded this type of progress and brought about a position in which they no longer had to export the necessaries of life and are able to avail of top-class conditions today.

We have in my county formidable farmers who are on the forward march. They are producing one-sixth of the country's entire milk production which means they are producing one-sixth of the young cattle. We have two major bacon factories producing pigs in a large way and the people are clamouring for advice, which they get. Recently the Minister brought about the position in which the advisory services have been brought to a certain standard. In Kerry the total is 80 and already we have 70. As chairman of the county committee of agriculture, I am very proud of the efforts of our people. We are on the forward march. We are not looking for interest-free loans but there are certain things we want done and which are very necessary.

We have a mountainous county, with a big number of small rivers which are putting a large acreage out of production and I would ask the Minister to arrange for certain intermediate drainage schemes to be initiated to help us out. Our very small holders who are on the maximum production should get some form of subsidy.I am referring to people who have about £4 valuation and have four or five cows. They are able to earn about £300 a year at the maximum and they require a little more where they have families. In Kerry, 72 per cent of our holdings are under £5; 84 per cent are under £10; and 96 per cent are under £20. We are a county of small farmers, of smallholders who are doing a very good job in maintaining their holdings. We are producing to the very maximum. If we can improve the position of land flooded here, we will greatly assist the productive efforts of our people. I know new housing plans are on the way to assist small farmers. That will relieve a lot of our troubles in Kerry and we are grateful for it.

I mentioned the period 1932-33. That was the period when American bacon was imported into this country at 65/- per box of six cwt. It was sold from 2d. per lb. down. Deputy Lynch boasted of the large number of pigs we were exporting at that time. But we were importing the worst type of bacon, the flitch of bellies, pure fat meat. At the same time, we were exporting our own top-grade bacon because our own people could not afford to eat it.

Both sides of the House should join together to ensure the continuing progress of our nation. Our people look with pride on the position we hold in the world today. Statistics prove we are the best-fed nation. By and large, we are a peaceful, progressive country. Some of the statements made here have been of no assistance to the people in their aims. Any Party seeking the support of the people by such efforts cannot expect to get very far. The people are entitled to a statement of what will be done to help them, but so far they have not had that from the Opposition.

Reference has been made to the turnover tax, but no reference has been made to what alternative system will be used if the turnover tax is abolished. I understand that when the question was put to some of the prominent leaders opposite, the reply was: "You cannot unscramble an egg." This means the tax could not be dismantled.If that is the position, the Opposition should state clearly what policy they will follow to find the money necessary for national progress.

Our people want to go forward. Many of them in England are anxious to come home. There is a great feeling of hope in the future of the nation, but some of what we hear on the floor of this House is of no assistance. I would sincerely ask the people opposite, however they may disagree with us on other matters, to put up to the Irish people a policy that will ensure the forward march of the nation. We cannot build our hopes for the future on statements such as those made by Deputy Lynch, who said that in 1931 bacon was £5 10s. per cwt. I promised I would give the figure. The figure is — you will get it in Table 233 of the Statistical Abstract, 1933 — 53/- per cwt.

I sold none of them at that price and I was selling pigs at the time.

Those are the official figures. On 18th November, 1931, I saw pigs taken home unsold from Killorglin fair. They could not sell them even at 30/- a cwt. I was selling pigs at that time.

Were you selling any in 1933?

I was, but I will not go back over the whole thing.

I believe you went back to 1924 in my absence.

I did, but I do not think the Leas-Cheann Comhairle will allow me go back over it.

The policy at that time was to destroy our pigs and cattle.

But preceding events led up to it.

The Economic War?

But what led up to it?

Deputy Lynch has already spoken.

Butter was 4d. per lb from 1924 to 1930. There was a reduction from 10/- to 9/- in the old age pension. All this led to an upsurge in the Irish nation to break the shackles which the foreigners were trying to impose with the help of the royalist people in our own country. That brought about the Economic War. The people waded through that and came out winners. The people who tried to back the royalists at that time are now trying to be the top nationalists. I am not holding that against them. I am asking them to ensure that the progress of the nation continues by producing a policy to find the money to finance the schemes before the country at present. If that is done, it will not matter which side controls the affairs of the Irish nation. The people will be content no longer with vague promises; they must be given the facts.

You will not let them vote.

As a forward-looking Party, we certainly had the best backward-looking speech I have heard in Dáil Éireann since I have had the privilege of being here. This Deputy who has just spoken went back prior to 1932. According to him, there was no agricultural production here, no prosperity, no stability, until Fianna Fáil came to office in 1932. I believe the Deputy believed that. It is a terrible thing to think that in the major political Party in the country today, there is a Deputy who could get up and make such a nonsensical speech. I think Deputy O'Connor, in trying to evaluate the agricultural situation as he sees is, believed what he said. I wonder if the greater number of the rank and file of the Fianna Fáil Party believe that sort of nonsense and if that complete and utter nonsense is put across at Party meetings, when they are discussing agriculture, to the rank and file of Fianna Fáil.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.
Top
Share