Committee on Finance. - Vote 38—Agriculture (Resumed). – Dáil Éireann (18th Dáil) – Wednesday, 15 Mar 1967

Committee on Finance. - Vote 38—Agriculture (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:

That the vote be referred back for reconsideration.

—(Deputy Clinton).

Mr. Jones

When I reported progress, I was commending to the Minister's attention that one of the best ways of assisting the farming community was in regard to the management of grassland. The production of good grass would be of assistance both to the dairying industry and the livestock industry. Two things are necessary in this respect. One is the provision of cheap fertilisers and the other—a question associated with education to some extent—soil analysis. Listening to the answers at Question Time today, we heard the amount invested by way of capital sum and the amount made available to manufacturers of fertilisers by way of grant by Foras Tionscal. Something that does not appear to be appreciated is that if the drive for the use of more fertilisers is to be as effective as it should be, the soil analysis service should be used to a greater extent. Anybody wishing to fertilise land should know exactly what is deficient in the land.

Another point is the provision of cheap fertiliser. We know the Department make a subsidy available but these subsidies are paid to the manufacturers of fertilisers at the end of the trading year when they produce their figures to the Department of Industry and Commerce which determines the appropriate amount of subsidy to be paid. If farmers could get cheaper fertilisers, this would eliminate the need for some other supports that we must have otherwise because if there was a more forward and more sustained crop of grass, it would enable even small holders to increase production considerably and would add to their incomes. This is something well worth considering.

As mentioned by Deputy Murphy some time ago, the people are not convinced that the benefit of subsidy is brought to the level of the farming community. I am open to conviction on whether or not it is administratively too difficult to provide a direct subsidy. If the Minister can sustain the case that administratively he has to control the subsidy through manufacturers of fertilisers, that is one thing, but I think there is a lot to be said for direct payment of the subsidy to the farmer against the weight of fertiliser purchased.

We have a sum made available for the Farm Apprenticeship Scheme. Since it is a small sum, we may take it that the scheme has not really got going. When the Minister's main Estimate comes along, perhaps he will be able to give us a better account of how this scheme is going. The question of farm apprenticeship is wider than just the mere provision of money in the Estimates and I think the Minister should seriously consider extending this scheme to its finality. It is quite some time ago since a former Taoiseach, Deputy Costello, mentioned an apprenticeship scheme whereby young farmers who had served their apprenticeship to farming would find themselves entitled to priority of consideration for some of the land which falls to be divided by the Minister for Lands.

There is little sense in talking of a farm apprenticeship scheme if the Minister cannot convince his colleague in the Department of Lands that he should relax the regulations under which young men are prevented from obtaining a holding after completing an apprenticeship scheme. I ask the Minister to consider this seriously and see if he can produce a worthwhile proposal to carry to finality the Farm Apprenticeship Scheme. Assistance is being given also through the committees of agriculture. This is a very useful form of assistance as it it brought down to local level and applied to local conditions. That is an admirable system.

There is some provision in the subheads for the Land Project. In 196566 the amount spent on this project was less than the sum provided. I am glad that in this case the Minister had to bring in a Supplementary Estimate because of increased spending on the Land Project. In this connection there is need to review the regulations. Schemes of work are being held up in cases where a number of people are occupied in something that will be advantageous to a number of them and one of them opts out. I know the difficulties involved here. There may be legal matters to settle but I suggest that if there are any new ways in which the Department can use its endeavours to ensure that the Land Project is made to work in such circumstances, they are well worth trying.

More money is sought for the bovine TB scheme to which the Minister referred. It is of some significance, especially for one from the southern area, when the Minister mentions that the percentage of reactors was higher than expected and said that while the increased incidence of the disease was disappointing it was not of great significance. On the whole I agree but it is certainly of significance so far as the individuals affected are concerned. We sometimes have unreasonableness regarding people affected. It is understandable to a degree in the case of a person who has been co-operating with the scheme from the beginning and now finds himself at the stage where his cattle again become reactors. Certainly, there is grave disappointment and serious loss. I suggest — I do not know how this thing can be operated — that where farms become locked up, as quite a number of them are in the south, some assistance should be given. I do not know how the Minister and his Department can get over this problem. It is a big one especially for people trying to rear families if the outlet from their land is blocked and if they cannot sell their cattle.

Everybody knows the help that competition is in the sale of cattle and the person who can drive his cattle to the fair or mart and show them there has an advantage. If he must rely on somebody coming to his farm to buy the cattle, he is in an unenviable position and he is forced to seek a buyer in a very restricted area. I know these cattle are bought but very often there is dissatisfaction with the price offered and the farmers concerned feel they are not getting what they should get as the market price if they were able to move these cattle to an area of competition. That is the kernel of the situation. This breeds distrust of the scheme and a certain amount of distrust of the officials who have the unenviable task of trying to cope with the situation. I do not think a large amount of money would be involved in giving the market price of these beasts, according to weight, but it would do much to create confidence in the scheme among the farming community.

The questions of the increase in livestock and the heifer scheme have already been mentioned here. The fact has also been stated that we have had quite a number of poor cattle as a result, particularly where there is only a small amount of land. If one takes the constituency of Limerick as a whole, where there are over 22,000 holdings and 17,000 of which are under 30 acres, the Minister will realise there is need for people to take land if they can find it. What happens to some people is that, when they take this land, they are then credited with a number of cattle, mythical or hypothetical, whatever way you like to take it, as being attached to this land. This increases for them the amount of their basic herd and very often deprives them of the grant to which they are entitled by increasing the number of heifers they are carrying.

I know the Department must have some system so as to prevent fictitious claims, but the Minister has reliable figures at his disposal, certainly since the beginning of testing, and that is quite a long time ago. He also has the returns of the creamery, if necessary, which would indicate the number of cattle on a farm at any given time. Between them, these statistics should enable the Department to pinpoint the basic herd of any person in an area. Certainly the person who increases his herd and who, in order to do that, has taken extra land on short-term letting should qualify for a grant. A number of cases have been brought to my notice and I brought them to the attention of the Department. I have got the stock answer that they have investigated the matter, but that this hard and fast rule which has been laid down must be observed.

This has created great hardship for quite a number of people, particularly those who kept cattle over last year, because they were told, when cattle prices were bad, to hold on. A good many people, bona fide, held on to those cattle and then found themselves in difficulty in regard to feed for them. To enable them to hold on to the cattle for some time, they took land on short letting. In these circumstances it is unfair that they should be penalised.

An increased sum had to be made available for the marketing of dairy produce and that was to be expected with the increasing number of cattle in the country. With the increase in the number of heifers first time calving we were bound to have an increase in the number of milch cows, resulting in an increase in the amount of milk which would become available. From this it would follow that no matter how milk could be diversified after that, whether as butter, cheese, chocolate crumb or milk powder, subsidies would be required. Probably the lowest of these at the present time is in relation to the marketing of butter. Under the brand of Kerrygold butter has been marketed successfully. This butter marketing board has succeeded in placing butter in its proper category on the British market and has continued to find a satisfactory price.

When the Minister mentions an increased price for milk, particularly quality milk, one of the things that is absolutely necessary — and perhaps this is not fully understood — is an adequate supply of water. This, of course, involves a good deal of capital expenditure in regard to the installation of a proper water supply on any farm. The Minister, having left the Department of Local Government and moved to the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries will remember that the grants for water were taken away from the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries and centralised in the Department of Local Government. I suggested at the time I did not think that was a wise thing; I still do not think it was a wise thing to take this responsibility away from Agriculture and Fisheries. The Department of Agriculture and Fisheries should have control over the provision of grants for water schemes for the farming community.

I have seen costings for water schemes. Some of these can be very expensive. There are very few which could be termed moderate. To get any kind of proper supply of water there must be a deep well. To sink a well at the present time, particularly in my own constituency where there is limestone land, it would be necessary to go to a depth of 120 to 180 feet. That, with the amount of equipment that has to be put into the bore after it has been made, gives rise to considerable expense. Some people may say the grant is generous — and I agree it is certainly generous to provide a grant at any stage — but one of the things not readily available to farmers is credit facilities to enable them to participate in these water schemes.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I do not think the matter of water schemes arises on the Supplementary Estimate. I do not see any subhead dealing with that.

Mr. Jones

Except in so far as it comes into this question of quality milk. In his speech the Minister mentioned the question of quality milk and that there would be an increase in its price. In order to have quality milk there must be an adequate water supply.

Mr. Dillon

That is why I inaugurated the water schemes.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

That would be a subject for the main Estimate.

Mr. Dillon

This scheme was inaugurated to enable quality milk to be produced. I inaugurated it, so I ought to know.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

There is nothing in the subheads that would make it relevant.

Mr. Dillon

There is a subhead for quality milk.

Mr. Jones

The Minister referred to the provision of a sum of money for bulk milk collection. I should like to hear more from the Minister in regard to this. A sum of £18,000 is involved; £10,000 has been taken up and now £7,000 is being provided. This sum was made available to a co-operative in Waterford. The Minister says this is by way of testing the operation of bulk milk collection under Irish conditions. What I am interested in is what exactly has the Minister in mind in regard to this pilot scheme? At the moment various co-operatives in the south are shifting milk themselves quite successfully from the point of collection for manufacturing purposes. In my constituency milk is moved over considerable distances to manufacturing concerns associated, for instance, with Golden Vale, to Mallow for manufacture there and to Rathmore for processing into chocolate crumb.

Here we find a sum being made available for Waterford Co-operative Society; this is described as a pilot scheme. I am intrigued, to say the least of it. Is this something in the Minister's mind for the future in relation to the dairying industry? Is it part of a scheme designed to deal with the rationalisation of the dairy industry? I should be glad if the Minister would elaborate on this. We shall have an opportunity of asking a number of more fully on the main Estimate. In 1966 I spoke about the disadvantages the dairy industry suffers in my constituency in relation to the removal of milk. I do not know if that is what is involved here. That is why I ask the Minister for more information.

In this Supplementary Estimate we are voting moneys which have already been spent. This Supplementary Estimate will have no effect on farmers' incomes. However, this does give us an opportunity of dealing with the matter questions in relation to the various subheads and, when the Minister comes to reply, I hope he will find it possible to answer these.

Mr. Dillon

It cannot be too strongly emphasised that our Standing Orders preclude us from discussing, even on a Supplementary Estimate of this considerable size, more general questions of policy. It is a matter of regret to me that this Supplementary Estimate does not provide that opportunity. It is a matter on which the public at large should be fully informed from the point of view of the restrictions which our Standing Orders put on the debate. We are dealing with the actual subheads introduced to meet charges which came in course of payment in the current financial year and we are labouring under the further disadvantage that, under our new rules of procedure, we are not yet aware of the terms of the main Estimate for the coming financial year. Up to last year we would have had in our hands at this point of time the main Estimate for the coming year and some of these charges could have been examined in the light of the general pattern that main Estimate would reveal.

I am rather surprised that this Supplementary Estimate contains no provision for the expense the Minister referred to in answer to a Parliamentary Question today of some thousands pounds spent on an advertisement he recently published. I do not know where that money came from. I suppose it will have to be provided because it is charged on public funds. The Minister said it did not very much matter where it came from: it worked. Worked, I wonder, to do what? Perhaps, when the Minister is concluding, he will tell us what. What was it intended to do? It seems to underline one fact, a fact I hope the farmers will take note of, namely, that the Minister disposes of very large sums of money which he uses for his own purposes and with which he believes apparently he can achieve almost everything. The farmers ought to remember that, great as are the resources at the disposal of the Minister, they have in their hands an instrument more powerful than anything he possesses, if they will only learn to use it — the simple instrument of the vote; that is more powerful than all the propaganda money the Minister can muster. I should like to elaborate on this but, out of deference to you, Sir, I shall reserve my elaboration on that topic for the main Estimate.

I turn now to the subheads in this Supplementary Estimate. The Minister speaks of the provision for cattle headage payments in the context of weakening prices, which, he says:

had been brought about by a number of factors outside our control, the principal ones being the sluggish demand from Britain for our stores and the virtual closing of the EEC markets to imports of cattle and beef as a result of the imposition of very high levies. I think there can be little doubt but that the fat cattle headage payment scheme kept trade moving during a very difficult period and prevented what could have been a serious situation in the market.

The man who believes that what the Government did, in fact, prevented what could have been a serious situation in the market is living in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land. I have a certain sympathy with the Minister's predecessor, who came from Clontarf, if he did not understand the gravity of the situation for the small farmers of this country over the past 12 months, but the present Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries comes from North Donegal. He was born and reared amongst small farmers and he ought to know their problems. I do not think he can avoid knowing their problems, even though he has become a resident of the city of Dublin. To say that any steps the Minister took relieves the circumstances of the small farmer who was depending on calves and yearling cattle is to delude himself to a degree I did not believe possible. Within the past six months, I have met men coming from fairs, driving home their yearling cattle before them: I have asked them: "Were you buying or selling?" And they have told me they were selling and that the best offer they could get was £20 for a beast 14 months old. They added: "We bought that calf within a week of its being dropped for £23". There were calves sold in the marts of the south of Ireland last week for 15/-.

Now, mark you, when you go to the relatively well-to-do areas of the south of Ireland, where farmers have large creamery connections operating, substantial as their loss is on their calf, they have the compensation that their prime occupation is the dairy industry. When you reflect on the condition of the small farmers in the west of Ireland, in Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan, however, who have not got that compensating condition but who depend very largely on the value of the calf, either as a dropped calf or as a yearling, and recognise that such cattle have become virtually unsaleable at any price, then to hear the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries saying that he thinks there can be little doubt but that the fat cattle headage payments scheme kept trade moving during a very difficult period and prevented what could have been a serious situation in the mart, would suggest to me, to put it at its most charitable, that he has not had sufficient time to catch up with the realities of the Department for which he is now responsible.

I want to direct the Minister's attention to a new menace which I watch with alarm in connection with this whole question of fat cattle and meat exports. It took this country 40 years to eliminate the scrub bull. In two years we have brought back the scrub heifer. Mark you, eliminating the scrub bull was quite a formidable undertaking — I suppose there were a few thousand bulls in the whole country— and our efforts were immensely facilitated by the emergence of artificial insemination, but when you come to eliminate the scrub heifer, which we ourselves have generated by the heifer scheme, God help the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries who undertakes the task. I see on farms a growing number of low grade, poor heifer cattle which I gravely apprehend will pull down the whole reputation of the Irish store cattle on the British market over the next ten years.

One of the most formidable tasks of any Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries in the immediate years that lie ahead will be to prevent a grave deterioration of quality in our livestock exports which is a direct consequence of the crazy heifer grant scheme which has not only reduced the standard of quality in our cattle but because it was formulated for the purpose of increasing numbers without any corresponding market plans whatever, has brought upon the most vulnerable, although the most valuable element of our rural community, a greater catastrophe that any I recall since the Economic War. I want to say that very substantial sums of money are being and have been made available under this whole scheme of headage payments for our fat cattle exported for immediate slaughter. I believe the previous Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries thought that when he negotiated this trade agreement in London under which the British Government undertook to pay headage payments on beef supplies, and to pay a subsidy on beef bought in this country and which could be converted into a headage payment here, and when he persuaded the Government to carry on this after the total amount of beef provided for in the agreement had been exported, that the proceeds would go to the producers of the cattle.

I wonder did he ever ask himself what was likely to happen. I do not suppose the man knew how the cattle trade operated at all. He pictured a farmer marching cattle up to the meat factories, getting paid the current prices for the cattle plus whatever bonus he had undertaken to pay the dead-meat factory. Of course, the thing is utter nonsense. What the dead-meat factories did, and what they could readily have been expected to do, was they went out to the fairs and markets and if the particular mart they went to, or the fair they attended, was over supplied with cattle, they bought cattle as cheaply as they could get them. They brought them to their slaughter houses, slaughtered them, skinned them, dressed them and exported them, and at the point of export they collected the headage grant. However, the farmer who sold the beast saw none of it and could not see any part of it unless there was an absolute shortage of fat cattle available for slaughter on the domestic market. But this crazy scheme which the Government inaugurated created a situation in which there was a surplus of fat cattle.

I do not minimise the problem which the Minister had in trying to ensure that whatever headage grant was made available for cattle would go to the people who produced the cattle. It is done in England and it is done in the North of Ireland and it should not have been impossible to devise a scheme to ensure that it would be done here. As it is, I doubt very much if those who sold cattle derived any benefit at all from it. However, whatever loss they were at as a result of our failure to ensure that the headage grant went back to the producers, their losses are microscopic compared with the losses sustained by the small farmers, the price of whose young stock has collapsed. For me the tragedy of that situation is that those hurt most understand least the nature of the catastrophe that has overtaken them.

I should be glad to know if the Minister has yet had time to examine this problem and whether he can suggest to us any scheme or plan whereby the critical situation of the small farmers in the congested areas who now have very large numbers of surplus cattle on their hands can be resolved and they can hope to sell those cattle at anything approximating to an economic price. By an economic price, I mean a price which would bear some relation to the cost of producing and feeding them over the past 14 or 18 months.

I met a man within the past month who professes to be not only a veterinarian of experience but a statistician of high standard and I think his claims are not unfounded. I said to him: "What in the name of God is happening to the cattle trade?""I will tell you, Mr. Dillon, what is happening to the cattle trade," he said. "We have by the heifer scheme created a surplus of approximately 100,000 two-year old cattle and upwards, and a surplus of approximately 100,000 cattle under two years old." I said I was not interested in these elaborate statistics and I asked him: "What would you do to resolve that situation? How would you restore a reasonable price level for the small farmer who depends on the production of store cattle?" He looked me straight in the eye and said: "If you want to know, there is only one way and that is to slaughter 100,000 calves."

That is a very grim diagnosis of a very urgent situation. We have created this extraordinary, crazy, surplus condition in our cattle trade, the end result of which I confess myself unable to see. I want to remind the House that I have interested myself primarily in agriculture in this House for 35 years, for six of which or nearly seven I was Minister for Agriculture. If anyone had suggested to me over that whole period that we would be reduced to the state where we had to subsidise cattle exports I would have laughed.

Does anyone realise that up to two years ago the British farmer was dependent on us for the raw material of his industry? Does anyone realise that up to two years ago the most eloquent and vocal defender we had in Great Britain was the British farmer? He was solicitous to say to the British Minister for Agriculture: "Whatever else you do, do not place any block or hindrance to the free access of Irish store cattle to the British market, because we, the British farmer, depend absolutely on that source of supply for our industry." Do Deputies realise that public meetings have been called in Norfolk and Scotland by enraged British farmers clamouring for their own Minister of Agriculture to stop imports of Irish cattle? I do not know if Deputies realise the magnitude of that catastrophe.

I am in the retail trade all my life, and I am in the wholesale trade all my life. There is no stock question I cannot resolve by prudent buying and administration. There is no finance problem, no financial business I cannot control in consultation with my bankers, and by the prudent administration of my own resources. There is no question of premises I cannot resolve by appropriate remedial steps. In addition to premises, and stock, and sales organisation, and finance, there is one asset which is of incalculable value to me as an ordinary trader, that is, goodwill. This has been built up over 120 years' trading, not by me but by those who went before me. If by my folly I let that goodwill go, if I so conducted my business today that that goodwill evaporated, I could not get it back. I certainly could not get back in a week, or a year, or ten years, what it took 100 years to build up. I saw a firm in this city throw away their goodwill and when they tried to come back and trade again, although they had been nearly 100 years in business here, they never got their trade back.

I think that is a terrible danger to the cattle industry of Ireland. It has expanded in numbers. That I concede most readily, but I cannot claim that I believe the quality of the cattle being produced today is as high as it was before the heifer scheme. I believe the scrub heifer is steadily operating to reduce the standard. I apprehend that though we may be able to obtain the goodwill of the British Government, this will be worth Sweet Fanny Adams if we have lost the goodwill of our customer, the British farmer. That is what I seriously apprehend may be one of the most deep-seated problems with which we have to grapple at present.

I should be glad to hear from the Minister when he comes to reply on this Supplementary Estimate, so that we can consider his reply in preparation for the main Estimate, does he believe, surveying the markets available to us, that we have an absolute surplus of cattle, and if that diagnosis is correct, has he yet had time to formulate any plan that would be economically sound. If he has, when those plans come to operate, has he any means of securing that, whatever provision he makes to restore the price of cattle to an economic level, the money will reach the farmers who produce the cattle and will not stick to the fingers of those who come between the producer and his ultimate customer, the British farmer, who wants to buy them for conversion into fat stock which will enjoy the benefit of the British subsidy in toto as provided under the 1948 Trade Agreement?

I want to turn for a moment to the question of pigs. It is perfectly true that, over many decades of our history, all of us in the Department of Agriculture were afflicted with the quinquennial picture of the pig cycle. I thought we had broken that cycle by the introduction of a guaranteed price for pigs. I do not see why we have not. Remember, in the old days what happened was that the supply of pigs went down and the price of pigs went up. Everybody got into pigs when the price began to move up and continued in pigs until the supply equated the demand, whereupon the price of pigs began to fall. There was a short period of surplus. The price fell catastrophically. Again, the price began to rise, the people went back into pigs and the price fell — and there you got a typical picture of an up and down wave of pig production.

We introduced a scheme in the Department of Agriculture in which we said: "We will provide a guaranteed price for pigs and we will relate that price to the price of feeding barley and, further, we give a guarantee that that price for pigs cannot be changed without six months' notice to the farming community at large" so that any man who brought a pig to the boar knew what he would get for the progeny, finished, fit for the factory, five months after the sow's insemination. I thought that scheme worked.

It appears to me that there has now entered into this equation a new element, that is, that the price of feeding stuffs is creeping up. Whether that is due to the restrictions placed by the Minister on the imports of milo and maize which form the constituent parts of a pig compound mixture or what the reason is I do not know. It certainly is not due to a rise in the price of feeding barley because no rise has been granted. In fact, I think that when I fixed the price of pigs, the price of feeding barley was 48/- a barrel. I think it is at that price, or less now. It may be that our arrangements have been thrown out of kilter by fluctuations in the price of feeding stuffs for pigs. If that is so, I suggest to the Minister that the remedy for the recurrence of the pig cycle to which he refers in his statement is a six months' guarantee of a standard ration at a standard price related to the guaranteed price for pigs over the same period.

There may be another element in this but it should not give rise to the cycle. It may be that the small pig producer is being squeezed out of the pig business as he is being squeezed out of the fowl business. I remember that when I first went to the Department of Agriculture there was a very large and prosperous business in the production of fowl in West Cork. That is completely gone. It is not gone through any fault of the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries or of his predecessor. It is just one of these things that happen as a consequence of a changing world. The broiler chicken has eliminated the old industry with which Deputy M.P. Murphy was familiar and for which, at one time, West Cork was internationally famous. That trade is dead and it will never come back. I think it was a great pity. A good chicken from Rosscarbery had a flavour that no broiler will ever have but we "just ain't going to have" any more Rosscarbery chickens: those days are gone.

Mr. M.P. Murphy

Do you know that the Minister for Finance has no chickens either? I heard that. I heard they gave up laying the golden egg.

Mr. Dillon

It is not only in Rosscarbery that it is happening. They gave it up for economic reasons: the Minister for Finance gave it up for Raheny reasons. He thought hens laid golden eggs. He discovered, by bitter experience, that all that glitters is not gold and he beat a prudent retreat from that adventure in agriculture. But there may be happening to the pig industry what happened to the Rosscarbery fowl industry. There is no doubt that when you guarantee the price of pigs, the situation can arise in which the person who keeps 1,000 pigs under highly specialised conditions in Jordan houses can take a smaller profit per finished pig than the person who is in a relatively small way of production. I should be interested to hear from the Minister when he is concluding on this Supplementary Estimate, whether the pig fattening centres, some of which have been inaugurated in the country, have in any measure operated to correct that tendency of driving the small producer out of the pig industry altogether: I had high hopes they would.

I understand that the pig fattening centre scheme was based on the proposition that the pig fattening centre chose sows of excellent breeding and maintained boars of suitable quality and they distributed the sows to the small farmers in the immediate area and that the pig fattening centre stood ready to buy the bonhams at ten or 14 weeks at so much per lb. which kept the small man in pig production. I understood that, turning over so large a number of pigs as they did, they were able to trade on the same margin of profit as the industrialised pig operator has been able to do.

It may be that if you are in a position to buy feeding stuffs on as large a scale as that kind of operation would justify and in large measure mix the feeding stuff yourself and avail of the cheapest kinds of raw material that are from time to time available, pig feeding might become economic again. The plain truth is that pig producing for small producers has ceased to be economic, bearing in mind the heavy labour it involves.

I do not know why it is but I think it is common knowledge that sows, being capricious creatures, choose to farrow, seven times out of ten, at 3 o'clock in the morning. If they do start farrowing at a reasonable hour of the day, they elect to carry on the operation for about 15 hours so that they keep you up until about 3 o'clock in the morning in any case. That is a serious matter if you have three or four sows in operation because, if they are doing their business, they ought to have two clutches per annum and that means that, eight months out of every 12, you have one of them operating at about 3 o'clock in the morning. It is hard work. It is work that requires to be highly remunerative if small family farms are to carry it on. Certainly, in the old days they did but unless they are assured of an economic return, they become less and less inclined to do so. I doubt if pig factories will fully take their place.

There is an additional evil in the present situation. In the constituency I represent, Monaghan, before the last war, we had an immense export trade in pork and that meant a pig of approximately 100 lbs. weight, dressed. It meant a younger pig than a mature bacon pig. It was a very profitable branch of the pig industry. One of the strange provisos of the so-called Free Trade Agreement with Great Britain was that we undertook to supply a certain minimum quantity of bacon to the British market. Having given that undertaking, we now find that we have not got the bacon to meet the quota we undertook to supply under the Trade Agreement and we are providing bacon over and above that which would ordinarily be available from resources that were ordinarily employed to furnish a relatively profitable pork market. So that we are not only abandoning a valuable market but we are undertaking an additional burden of subsidy because we have promised to export the pigs in the form of bacon which fetches a poorer price than if we shipped them in the form of pork and at the same time, we have to keep them from three to six weeks longer than we would have to keep them if we were free to ship them as pork.

The more I see of the so-called Free Trade Agreement the more bewildered its provisions appear to me to be. We have succeeded in alienating the British farmer in the cattle trade. We have succeeded in imposing on ourselves an obligation to sell bacon we have not got and bacon on which we have to pay a very high rate of subsidy at the expense of a pork market which was very valuable and out of which we are being pushed and on which we had to pay a relatively trivial export bounty and into which some people claim they could export pork without any subsidy at all.

I do not say that I am prepared to vindicate that. The Department's answer is: "We do not believe it. We believe that when we started licensing them they would be back on our doorstep a week later claiming that they wanted a subsidy" but I have heard men make the claim that, given freedom of opportunity, they could pay a competitive price for pigs and export them free of all subsidies. I do not assert that because I think there may be some wangling in that and what they want to do is to sell it on the domestic pork market, get a preferential price for it and then blackmail the Department into giving them a subsidy afterwards.

Mr. James Tully

What about Haughey's hens?

Mr. Dillon

It is not quite as fraudulent as Haughey's hens but it might partake of that kind of claim. I mention it as one of the strange consequences of this infernal Trade Agreement, the more I see of which the less value it appears to have for this country.

I see some of my colleagues here long experienced in the creamery trade and I want to raise a thing that has puzzled me a good deal. I hear of the price of creamery milk going up by 1d and going up by 2d and then the Minister says in the course of his statement:

The general creamery milk price allowance paid by the Exchequer was increased from 4d to 6d per gallon as from 27th May, 1966, and the extra sum required to meet this is £2,305,000.

Do the farmers get it? What becomes of it? My neighbours tell me. I admit that although we had a creamery in Ballaghaderreen in 1906, I could not claim that the area in which I live is primarily a creamery area. This is what raises my suspicions and anxieties: Deputy Jones was talking here earlier of the Minister's pilot scheme for the bulk collection of creamery milk. I understand that there was already a pilot scheme in operation for the bulk collection of creamery milk operated by Lough Egish in Monaghan but what puzzles me is that I think the farmers who bring milk to Lough Egish do get the extra 1d we provide. My information from my own constituency is that there is a corresponding increase. I should like to hear from the Minister when he is concluding has he heard any complaints from certain areas of the country that this 2d and 4d he speaks of as costing the Exchequer £2,305,000 to provide is, in fact, being passed on to the creamery rather than to the milk producer? It is an extremely difficult thing to determine.

I was looking at some of my creamery cards and I discovered that in the month of July last year my butter fat content was 3.7; this year it was 3.2. How am I to check that and is the machinery provided by the IAOS adequate to deal with that question? Is the machinery provided by the Department of Agriculture adequate to deal with it? To tell you the truth. I do not believe the Department of Agriculture has any very effective check on that whole question of testing butter fat content at all.

I will blame the Department for what it is responsible for. I resent its being blamed for what it is not responsible for. I heard somebody recently in a very public place blaming the Department of Agriculture most eloquently because he was not allowed to change from one creamery to another creamery. My recollection is that the Department does not give a fiddle-de-dee where he draws his milk to. They made an agreement, at the farmers' request, with the IAOS that such transfers would not be allowed but that agreement was made at the request of the farmers and the co-operative movement, not at the request of the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Agriculture in so far as it is concerned with the matter at all is merely acting in support of the IAOS which represents the co-operative societies in the country. So that whatever blame attaches in relation to that problem certainly does not attach to the Department of Agriculture because it does not give a fiddle-de-dee where a man leaves his milk, but, once having agreed with the IAOS to support the status quo situation, the Department does its part and no more than its part.

I think there does devolve on the Department and on the Minister responsibility to see that there is some check to ensure that if we provide finance to increase the price of milk by 2d a gallon to the creamery milk supplier the creamery milk supplier gets it. I recognise the problem. We cannot determine in this House what the butter fat content of any particular man's milk will be from one month to another. I am not sure of any certain remedy for the situation but this I do say that in certain areas of the country, there is a growing impression, which I believe to be justified by the evidence of the creamery cards I see, that the full extra price being made available by this House for creamery milk is not reaching the creamery milk producers and I think it is a matter that requires investigation and examination.

I am a little surprised to read that 40 per cent of the milk delivered to creameries is all that qualifies for the quality bonus. I remember my old friend Deputy Corry whom I thought would burst a blood vessel here in the House when Deputy Donegan was speaking on the creamery industry and thought that some measure should be taken to encourage farmers to improve the quality of their milk so that we could diversify into cheese, dried milk and chocolate crumb. Deputy Corry was tortured by the thought that Deputy Donegan should say that Cork farmers were delivering dirty milk to their creameries and that only a villain like Deputy Donegan would say such a thing. He cried loudly and repeatedly over this foul slight on the creamery farmers.

Then his own Government introduced a scheme to provide a bonus for what they call quality milk. I am surprised that Deputy Corry has not been in here to challenge his Minister over the fact that the quality bonus was paid to only 40 per cent of the creamery milk suppliers.

Mr. Clinton

The Minister said 49 per cent.

Mr. Dillon

I know the Minister said 49 per cent, but I am speaking of the time when Deputy Corry nearly got a stroke in Dáil Éireann because Deputy Donegan suggested that, in order to expedite diversification, some improvement in the quality was desirable. I was going out to get a bucket of cold water to pour it over Deputy Corry's head for fear he would burst a blood vessel in my presence. Bad as he is, I would not like that to happen. For that reason, we had a Minister for Agriculture bringing in a scheme to provide a bonus of 1d. per gallon for quality milk and, instead of 100 per cent, only 40 per cent qualified for that bonus. I think it is time Deputy Corry came back into the House and told the present Minister what he thinks of him for stating in Dáil Éireann that only 40 per cent of milk is worthy of the quality bonus, in view of Deputy Corry's past passionate indictment of Deputy Donegan.

I look forward to the opportunity of discussing the Minister's main Estimate. He will know more about his job then than he now knows, and we will have a more widespread and interesting discussion. He will then have had time to consider the consequences of what some of his predecessors have done; he will have time to tell us what he intends to do. Perhaps before he finishes today he will tell us what he meant when he said that, even if he spent £2,000 on newspaper advertising, it was worth it. What was he trying to do?

Mr. L'Estrange

To start class warfare.

Mr. Dillon

I will not challenge him on the main Estimate for the Department of Agriculture as to the meaning of the word "Taca". That we will thrash out on the Estimate for the Department of Education, but I look forward to the discussion on all these schemes which will provide a very profitable occupation for the Members of the House. If they do not provide entertainment for the public, they will at least provide astonishing information.

Mr. L'Estrange

All things being equal.

Mr. Dillon

They will make sure that some things are more equal than others.

Mr. P. Hogan

(South Tipperary): One matter mentioned by Deputy Dillon prompted me to intervene in this debate, the matter of the rights of farmers who supply milk to our creameries. Everybody is familiar with the complaint by some farmers that they cannot understand the figure they get for their butter fat. That is the factor on which their monthly cheque is paid and some of them have expressed serious misgivings on occasion. Apparently a scheme is in operation by agreement with the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society that, unlike the farmer who takes his barley to a factory and gets a sample, the farmer who takes his milk to the creamery does not get similar facilities with regard to a cross-check of his butter fat.

One supplier felt so dissatisfied that he took samples of his milk and sent them for analysis to different laboratories. He went so far as to have a guard accompany him to the creamery and then to the local post office from which he posted off the samples. Apparently there was considerable discrepancy between the findings of the creamery and the return he got from the analyst. He carried the matter further and took legal action but it was discovered that a case like that cannot go into court. It must be dealt with by arbitration. He felt that the arbitration scheme was not satisfactory and, in general, he felt dissatisfied with the whole procedure.

If that is the system, it does not seem to be completely satisfactory. If a man feels he is being prejudiced in relation to the percentage of butter fat in his milk, there should be some machinery by which he could cross-check his milk against the findings of the creamery. I will ask the Minister to examine that aspect of the matter. I know the scheme is not being directed by his Department and that it has been handed over to the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society but I would ask him to see if he can bring about any improvement in the scheme.

There are two other points I would like to bring to the Minister's attention. One is the fat cattle headage export grant. Most Deputies will recall this was introduced some time last autumn. I do not know how much money had to be provided for that purpose ultimately. Owing to the bottleneck in our cattle exports, many farmers had to hold over their store animals and they proceeded to fatten them. The Minister, in an effort to relieve the situation, introduced this headage grant. Different grants were given from week to week. They were gradually increased as the year progressed from autumn onwards. They suddenly terminated early in December. I understand that the British Minister for Agriculture intervened and practically told the Minister for Agriculture here to stop it and that he agreed to stop it somewhere about 1st December. I want to ask the present Minister if it is envisaged, in the event of a similar bottleneck in our cattle exports next autumn, to re-introduce this fat cattle headage export grant. Are we permitted under the Trade Agreement to re-introduce it or is the British Minister for Agriculture empowered to tell us not to introduce it? I understand he objected to our Minister here, under pressure from his own British farmers, who resented the subsidisation of the export of fat cattle to the British market as distinct from the deficit help from the British Exchequer for stores under the 1948 Agreement.

The third point I want to put to the Minister is again in the form of a question. It relates to our subsidisation of carcase meat. How much money are we likely to get from the British Exchequer and when are we likely to get it? Has the Minister given up all hope of being able to pay this type of subsidisation directly to the farmers? I put down a Parliamentary Question here and he gave an explanation of the administrative difficulties involved in giving it to the Irish farmer. I raise the matter again to exhort him to bend his mind to this question because it is causing dissatisfaction. I believe this matter could be re-examined to see if any means could be devised by which this subsidisation we give to our factories and local slaughterhouses could be made available to the producer. Until that is done, there will be all sorts of suspicions, recriminations and dissatisfaction. Therefore, I request the Minister to have another look at this matter and see if he can devise some means of achieving that.

Dáil Éireann debate - Wednesday, 15 Mar 1967

Committee on Finance. - Vote 38—Agriculture (Resumed).

Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 15 Mar 1967