——but he expressed the gravest suspicions of the recommendation made by the IAOS for the rationalisation of the Irish creamery industry. This debate, so far as it has gone, has been coloured by recent events in the agricultural world and in particular, by the demonstrations of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association for what they call a two-tier price. This is not the brainchild of the ICMSA. It was not conceived by any Irish farmer. It is the brainchild of an old classmate of mine, Ray Crotty, of Kilkenny. It is not my intention to throw a great deal of cold water upon it, but there are some obvious things that come to mind.
The vast majority of the creamery milk suppliers would be the beneficiaries under, let us say, the first tier. But these are men who by their own industry and thrift—and there are men like this in every parish, as Deputy Jones and Deputy Flanagan well know —and by their application, suitability to their job, brains and hard work, built themselves up to a level where they would qualify for the second tier, and the thanks they get from the organisation which says it represents them is to reduce the price of milk for production over a certain figure. I recognise that the objective and the intention behind this is fair enough, but I think that underlying this automatic demand is the belief that the one and only cure for the problems of the dairy farmer and, indeed, the whole agricultural community in general, would be more assistance from the Government. It is no harm to recall that over the past ten years the assistance given by the Government to farmers directly has multiplied by three.
It is unfortunate that the organisation that makes this demand without any discussion, without any argument, is the same organisation as hanged this IAOS document without trial. The proposals made by their own organisation, the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, for the benefit of the farmers was hanged without trial by the Irish Dairy Industry Committee, the personnel of which, I am told, is largely identical with that of the ICMSA. I think that is most unfortunate.
As I said by way of interjection a while ago, this does not profess to be a blueprint in any respect. It is merely a most tentative suggestion that points out in a very general way the present condition of our co-operative organisation and it makes mildly, almost timidly, some proposals for its benefit. They are proposals for discussion, for improvement, if possible, and all for the benefit of the farmers. It has this great merit in this document the farmer says to himself: "The Government will give us every help possible and we, in turn, will look at our own organisation and see what we can do to help ourselves."
In thinking of the recent campaign by the ICMSA and what must be called the civil war between them and the NFA, it is my opinion as a farmer that our problems are being ignored both by the NFA and the ICMSA and that more attention is being given by each organisation to the war for supremacy between those two organisations. I appeal to them both to recognise this fact themselves and to settle their differences because they are doing the farmers of Ireland no service. Some foolish people have said that the Government would be delighted to play off one party against the other. How can anyone be so stupid as to say such a thing? How could any Minister for Agriculture do anything but rejoice if he had one, strong, united farmers' organisation to help him do his job properly, because the criterion of success for any Minister for Agriculture is to increase benefits for farmers, to ease their lot, to increase their production and make them healthier and happier men. He will not do that when the farmers' organisations are tearing one another's throats out, and anyone who says the Minister or anyone else is benefiting by this regrettable split in the farmers' organisations is no better than a fool, and should be treated as such.
Again as a farmer representing a very rural constituency, I appeal to these people. This has gone on long enough. The rank and file of the farmers are fed up with it, and wish that they would come together and form a decent farmers' organisation, if possible, something on the lines suggested recently. However, that is a matter for themselves to decide. It will demand great breadth of mind on the part of leaders of the organisations. It will possibly demand the eating of a little crow by both parties, but I think the men who constitute both these organisations are big enough to do that. If that could be achieved, it would be a great day for the Irish farmer, and both of the organisations could then get down to examine the purpose behind this IAOS plan. As I have said, its main purpose is to get the farmers' organisations and the farmers' co-operatives to do something for themselves as well as getting the maximum amount of help from the Government which will always be forthcoming from any Irish Government.
It is true to say that the help they have got has been multiplied by three by this Government, but, in my opinion, it is dangerous that a mentality should grow up in which farmers will automatically and unthinkingly turn to the Government, to the Minister for Finance, to the Minister for Agriculture, and say: "We are in trouble. Our incomes are low; you will have to fix this." He can help but if that idea becomes accepted, it would be a bad day for the farmers themselves, because in the last analysis they must depend on themselves. I believe if the small farmer co-operatives do not improve themselves by uniting and the individual small farmers do not try to stand on their feet collectively through their co-ops there will be little chance for the maintenance of the small farmers' position.
It would take too long possibly to go into any detail as to the reasons why the IAOS plan was rejected out of hand, without trial and possibly without being read. The constitution of the IAOS and of the committees under their control have been examined already in this House during this debate and there are many people who fear, as Deputy Jones fears, that some small creameries will become extinct and that the creamery personnel will thereby be disemployed. The same kind of argument can be made with regard to any line of industry where efficient methods are introduced to replace old, inefficient ones. Possibly it would almost be necessary to have some rearrangement but since its aim is to have a thriving industry, then it is obvious that a thriving industry will give more employment rather than less. This will mean more competent management. The fears some people may have of disemployment because of the adoption of some such plans of the IAOS are, in my opinion, groundless.
I want to return to something I discussed in this House before. Some of my colleagues, especially Mr. John Moher, who was a Deputy here, took the same line with regard to this. As I have already said, this IOAS scheme is based on a tentative approach. When Mr. Moher was here, he, some others and myself did not flatter ourselves when we identified some of the difficulties of the co-op organisation before Dr. Knapp arrived.
Probably Mr. Moher and many others of us had the advantage of coming from rural Ireland. We lived there all the time and we knew what we were talking about. The same difficulties have been underlined here year after year. The IAOS did nothing about this for about 40 years.
The first thing to do is to identify the obvious faults of the co-operative organisation as it is now. Some progress has been made out of the utter isolation of the small co-operatives in recent years. I suppose, ten years ago, the great majority of co-operative creameries in Ireland were completely isolated. I remember Mr. John Moher described the individual managers of those little creameries as Raniers in their little Monacos. That was the position then. Not only was there no co-operation in the individual creamery societies but in many cases there was keen rivalry as regards such things as suppliers. Those individual creameries should realise the great opportunities that would accrue to them if they all got together and said: "We will go into this business together."
The first fault in those small organisations is their small size and because of that many of them are operating as butter factories with their little churns working for a couple of hours a week. The small suppliers come into them with their supply of milk on their own vehicles, whether it is the back of a tractor, the ass and the cart or some other conveyance. I often wonder how some of those individual co-operative societies ever managed because of their general inefficient running. Of course, like all small units, there are notable exceptions. There are some small units in my own constituency which have made notable contributions to the raising of agricultural standards within their own areas. Those individual units are very few. It is a very different matter when it comes to the boundaries of those areas.
The sole preoccupation of those small co-operatives was milk and butter. The farmer who supplied them had some other enterprises. They had pigs and grain but the co-operatives never took any interest in that at all. Above all, the co-operatives never concerned themselves in any way at all with the basic material for the milk, in the first place, which is grass or the necessity to produce high quality grass in order that milk production would be increased within their own creamery area. Advisory services of their own were completely absent in those creameries. The creameries did not take the slightest interest in the activities of the individual members. Each person arrived early in the morning with his milk; he collected his skimmed milk; and he went home again. That particular kind of production is long since doomed to failure.
We must, in fairness to the managers of the creamery co-operatives, recognise their natural fears in any proposal that will be made for re-organisation. As I have already said, the re-organisation will give more employment for co-operative people rather than less. It seems to me at any rate, that the fears of individual managers are groundless. Another difficulty of the small independent co-operative creamery was the fact that while his product might be good in quality, the gross production of our Irish creameries was not uniform. The production of three or four different creameries might all be good but it would be different and they were not able to produce a uniform high quality production for export out of that area.
High-pointing the faults of creamery organisations as we find them, we come to the constitution of creamery committees and again this varies. There are some creamery committees who, with efficient managers, have done excellent work for the farmers in their areas. There are other committees in which the tenure of office not only lasts for the duration of a committee man's life but it passes on. It is a hereditary title. It is a little status symbol of committee membership, of hereditary succession to fathers to whom membership had also been passed on. These committees are not remarkable for their contributions to the welfare of the creameries they serve. The most serious fault of all in the small creameries is their isolation one from the other. I have said it before but it is worth saying again that the obvious and logical questions this begs is what ought the co-operative organisations be.
I think the local creamery ought to be an integral part of an agricultural organisation which could be enormous in potential, in production and in the benefits it would confer on the farmers who put it there in the first place. It could be very efficient. It is with a view to achieving efficient production that I advocate the amalgamation of the creameries, because what use would there be in reorganising the creameries if it were not for the farmers in the country as a whole?
Ideally, a local creamery in an organisation such as I envisage would supply cream to a central butter factory, having collected the milk in the first place from the individual suppliers. In that way, there would be more uniform butter production. Not only that, but the local creameries should be centres from which individual farmers would get their fertilisers. Local farmers would be able to hire their farm machinery, would be able to arrange for the erection of farm buildings, would be able to plan their production programme and their marketing programme. I shall return to that because, as I have said, many farmers not only produce milk but they produce meat of all kinds — beef, mutton, pork and the other kinds of produce which are not considered at the moment by most co-operatives.
When I speak of amalgamation of small creameries into large units, I envisage for the sake of argument areas of about county size, embracing all the co-operative societies within their respective borders. I consider that in an area of that size the co-operative organisations should be well able to handle the bulk distribution of fertilisers from one centre. I consider it to be the function of the individual societies, the various creameries, to take farmers' orders for fertilisers, to transmit them to the central depot and have the fertilisers distributed to the farmers' land as and when the individual farmers require it.
Most co-operative creameries at the moment deal in fertilisers. In the first place, they deliver them in sacks. In the second place, they very often attune their prices to the prices of local merchants and thirdly, and most importantly, they deliver them in very small quantities, therefore, uneconomically and, therefore, expensively. I feel sure an organisation of county size, of the kind I am talking about, would be able to do the whole job for the farmers more cheaply than is being done now, when the farmers have to collect from the creameries. At present most co-operative creameries deal in feeding stuffs for pigs, calves and other animals, in small quantities. Since they are produced in small quantities they are relatively expensive. I understand that in parts of the country co-operatives are approaching the problem of the establishment of a central stock feeding milling plant. It is probably one of the most obvious courses for the adequate supply of animal food that is open to co-operatives, but no great progress has been made.
The Mitchelstown group of creameries have pioneered a farm machinery hire service and I believe it is very efficient. Speaking of the dairy country as a whole—the whole of Munster and south Leinster—there is not any uniform availability of the kind of machinery the farmers require nowadays, such as silage making machinery. It costs the individual farmer about £2,000 to £3,000 to equip himself for silage making economically. This is an ideal case where the local co-operatives could provide such a high service, but it would be provided more economically by a large central unit.
A great source of mastitis among cows in recent years has been the inefficient servicing of milking machines by inexpert people. A group of highly trained technicians with vans could get around an area of county size and be able to service such machinery. There could be a couple of teams of maintenance men who would call on farmers periodically to check all milking machines and see that they were functioning properly. This has not been done on a wide scale as far as I know.
There are in this country meat processing plants that were established as co-operatives but which do not function as co-operatives. The only benefit shareholders get from them is that for every £100 they own in share capital they get a cheque for £6 10s. or £7 every year if they are lucky. They are never told when there is, for instance, a market for lamb and, in fact, the co-operatives never inquire if the farmers have lambs, bullocks or pigs. Very often the management committee of such co-operatives is the hereditary right of a small minority and gives the farmers, whose money put it there in the first place, no service at all. I do not see why co-operative meat factories of this kind could not be welded into the general structure of a strongly federated, united co-operative organisation. I mentioned already that advisory services are topics about which opinions clash very heavily and have done so for years.
Deputy Dillon always advocated a parish plan. The parish plan, in my opinion, took no cognisance of the facts at all. The parish advisory service was accepting the Ireland, first of all, of the individual farmer and it would help him as best he could to produce whatever he could to no set pattern. Other people have advocated other advisory services of other kinds. I think that a strong united co-operative organisation, embracing all the farmers in the country eventually, primarily and initially in the dairying areas where a co-operative movement exists, in however stunted a state, would be the place to impose advisory services because with tight liaison between production and management and, finally, processing of products, the advisory service is a vital link between the farmer who produces the stuff and the food processing factory, whether it be a butter factory or a meat factory who handled it. They would be able to gear their production completely and precisely through the advisory service to the available market. They would be able to diversify to some extent, and in fact, through the advisory service, advise the individual farmers when there would be a market for such and such a commodity.
Similarly in the handling end of the business, the food processing end would be fairly accurately aware of the available size of any commodity, whether lamb for the French market or bacon or pork for the British market. I think that close liaison between the farmer and the processing end of agriculture would give a strong organisation and farmers would be able to iron out a lot of the troughs that occurred most noticeably in our pig production over the years. The graph of pig production over 20 or 30 years looks like a saw, a slight over-production leading to a light drop in prices, leading in turn to a slight drop in production and numbers. When the numbers and prices drop, people get in at that stage and there is the rising end of the graph again. There is a complete absence of liaison between the processing end of the bacon industry and the producer.
As I say, a well organised co-operative organisation, with a good advisory service superimposed on it, would eliminate management difficulties. It is a tall order, I suppose. It is a tall order when you consider the reception the tentative plan of the IAOS received from one fraction of the farmers' organisation, but I think it must be done. I think there is no point at all in any Deputy coming in here, whether he be Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil or Labour, or anything else, and pointing out in dreary monotony all the difficulties the small farmer has if some means are not devised whereby he can help himself. He must learn and he must understand that with the best will in the world and the best support the Government can give him, unless there is this effort to independence and self-reliance, many of them will not succeed in raising their standards. Therefore, it behoves farm organisations to apply themselves to the problem of helping the farmer to help himself. The leadership, in my opinion, must come from the farm organisations. I hope in the future it will come from the farm organisation; I hope there will be only one. But, so much effort is dissipated in scoring clever points one after the other that the real interests of the farmer seem to have been forgotten, to some extent at any rate, by both parties in the present dispute.
It is easy enough to recognise the farmer's grievance. It is easy enough to understand how a small farmer living perhaps on 25 acres and making a living of £300 from it, if he is fairly good, feels when he looks at the ease with which industrial workers can improve their lot and get the sympathy of everybody because they are united. It never seems to strike the farmers that if they were strong and united, they would probably have the strongest organisation of all. The béal booht approach to farm problems will not solve the farm difficulties and the sooner we all face up to that the better and the farmers must be the first to recognise it. If they do not, no matter what help the Government gives, they will never achieve the production this country is really capable of. I hope they succeed in resolving their differences and I hope they will apply themselves to this most important of all tasks, that along with the help they already get from the Minister and the Government they will unite the forces of the farming people of Ireland and enable them to help themselves.
