I feel that we should produce a land policy which will ensure realistic pensions and an active Land Commission. Such a policy should be produced to ensure that the men who will be staying on the land will make the best use of it and be in a position to get full control of it. Too often we have seen good productive land, as the owner gets older, falling in production. This continues until such time as the new owner takes charge. Such a process could continue for a few generations but we cannot afford to have the luxury of that. Neither can we afford to have land set for a period of time until it is taken over by a new owner.
In this age of the EEC we should produce a realistic pension scheme which will encourage older farmers to retire and hand over the running of their farm to young men. In this regard I should like to compliment Macra na Feirme on producing a booklet on this subject in the last few days. This organisation has been studying the problem for many years and has now produced a very comprehensive document which covers this matter in great detail.
The last scheme introduced was realistic at the time but it meant the start of inflation. The pensions which were set then were absolute and could not be increased. The upshot was that if a person waited for a year or so he found that what he would be getting would be very small. With the way inflation has gone it has not proved realistic for people to hand over their land to the Land Commission. If we introduce a pension scheme we must tie it in with a cost of living index so that a pension given to a retiring farmer will rise with the increase in the cost of living. We should make sure that the pension given to the retiring farmer will have the same purchasing power in ten years' time as at the time he hands over his land.
We have a good opportunity of producing viable farms, particularly in the West of Ireland. if such a scheme is introduced. Macra na Feirme, according to The Irish Press of today, has discovered that there are no successors to take over 50,000 farms. This is a very startling piece of information. Those 50,000 farms are owned by farmers of 55 years of age and over. The absence of successors in the West of Ireland has been a big social problem for many years and one which will have to be solved. There is no need to go into the reason for the late marriages but the fact remains that there are no successors for this big number of holdings.
What is more serious is the fact that there are a number of apparent successors—sons, nephews and cousins— who are living away and are not interested in returning to take over ownership of such holdings. Here we have an opportunity of producing a policy which will encourage the older people to relinquish their holdings before the running of their farms becomes a burden to them. If such farmers could be guaranteed a reasonable pension I believe a big number of them would be willing to sell the land to the Land Commission. I believe that the idea of leasing has a lot to recommend it. The person taking over the land as a security will have it for a number of years. Macra na Feirme have advocated a 12-year period. This period is necessary in connection with any farm plan. Any farmer knows that if he wants to change his system of farming the change-over will take three or four years. This may mean a change from dry stock to milk production, or from milk production to the rearing of calves.
A person of 16 or 18 years of age may feel he has no future on an uneconomic farm, but he may see a farm nearby whose owner is getting old. Some encouragement should be given to young people. They should be given a chance to lease land. The land could, perhaps, be given to them completely if the Land Commission could buy it. The young people would then stay on the land. It is sad to see people reared on the land who believe there is no future for them in farming.
In the west of Ireland much extra land could be brought into production. In large areas of the west the land is dry. Plenty of fertilisers are needed to ensure extra production. Reclamation is not necessary because the land is already dry. The land in the west is usually overstocked. Store cattle are reared. It seems advantageous to the farmers there to have the greatest possible number of cattle on the land. There is a demand for store cattle. Farmers from the eastern part of the country like beasts in store condition. When fattened up they are suitable for the English trade or for the factories. Something must be done to improve production in that part of the country.
We know that there has always been a problem in regard to the transfer of ownership of land. A father may be afraid of handing over to a younger man. A young man may have ideas which seem a little wild to his father. A transfer of ownership is absolute. The young man has complete control. This has some detrimental effects. On some occasions there could be disagreements when the young man marries and the older people cannot agree with his wife, or vice versa. On some occasions old people have been put in what was known as the “county home”.
There is another point in relation to ownership. A man may be in his late fifties or early sixties and have worked his farm for 25 or 30 years. He may suddenly sign over the farm and a young man then takes over. The takeover is a big shock to the older man. He has no say in the running of the farm from there on. The young man may be very thoughtful and consult him. He may try to arrange matters so that the old man has some say in the running of the farm, but the shock is still there and the older man may be inclined to retire completely. He may feel that he has no great aim in life from there on. He may take no interest in the proceedings. This is a social and economic fact which has a bad effect on him.
Macra na Feirme have suggested that the father should lease the land to the son for a specified period. This would give the young man full control of the land, but the older man would realise that he still owned the land; if anything went wrong at least the farm would not have gone from his ownership. His home would also be safe. Perhaps more research should have been done into leasing. There may be difficulties regarding credit. Most farms look for credit at some stage or other. Farm leasing, as at present constituted, does not give the bank manager or the ACC sufficient security. The young man does not get a chance. The Government or the Dáil are expected to create a situation where the finance houses would look favourably on the prospect of giving credit in such cases. Some system should be devised to provide security for the finance houses giving credit to the sons leasing the farms.
A great deal of thought has gone into this recommendation. It is based on the idea of a viable farm. We must all think in terms of a viable farm because for too long we have had uneconomic farms. The word "uneconomic" does not really convey the hardships that many farmers had to suffer. Their income was very small and we are seeing the result of that now when there are 50,000 farmers, aged 55 or over, with no successors.
The leasing system would ensure that there would be an income for the father. One reason why farmers would not sign over their farms was that they would have no income. Quite a number of them signed over simply in order to get the old age pension. I did not think it was right to see a man who had been independent all his life signing over to go on social security. He was entitled to something more than that. Under this system the father will have an income from the land. He will still have his wife to support and possibly some younger members of the family. He will still have ownership of the land. I hope the death duties aspect will be taken into account when the White Paper is published because if, when the older man dies, there are big death duties it will defeat the whole object of the exercise.
In Scandinavian countries it is usual for a son to buy the farm from his father. This leaves the older man independent but it also creates grave problems. I found there that farms were usually up to 80 per cent in debt. I visited and stayed in the homes of some of those farmers. They would almost boast of the amount of money they could borrow from the bank. In Denmark it was the Land Bank. Those farmers were very deeply in debt. Where there is such a lot of debt there will be very frequent changes of ownership. In the late fifties, when I was there, ownership of land in those countries extended on average only over 15 years. One of the farmers with whom I stayed came over to stay with me for a few days a couple of years ago. He had sold the farm on which I had stayed and moved to a smaller farm a mile down the road. This happened because he had a very bad illness and was not able to do much work for a whole year. After that his financial position was such that he had no option but to sell the land, settle some of his debts and buy a smaller farm.
If we move towards a new policy of farm ownership I hope we will never reach the stage where if a person is in bad health for a period he will have to sell his farm and buy a smaller one. We are moving a certain distance in this direction without any policy on the part of the Land Commission. I would say the period of ownership of land in the eastern part of the country is a much shorter period than in the west. In my part of the country 50 or 60 per cent of the farms sold this year will be re-sold in a period of 5 or 6 years. One of the reasons for that is that a person who buys a farm usually has to borrow some money. He needs a certain amount of capital to stock the farm. He does not anticipate any difficulties. Anybody connected with land knows that one plans ahead but completely unforeseen difficulties may arise. This year, for instance, nobody could have foreseen the difficulties of the tillage farmer. Even with so much machinery in the country at present there will be a percentage of this year's harvest that will not be harvested at all. I would say it will be one of the worst we ever had. Nobody could have anticipated anything like that. If an unforeseen situation arises for a farmer he may not be able to meet his commitments and may have to sell. If a policy of leasing is being devised on the lines that Macra has suggested we will need to ensure that the finance houses will be able to provide credit for the young man leasing the land from his father or from a neighbour.
This idea can be expanded. Macra na Feirme dealt only with the father and son relationship. It can be enlarged quite substantially so that farms next door, or fairly near, could be leased. We must make it enticing to the owner. The Land Commission must build in something realistic as the basis of an income and it must be tied in with the cost of living and with inflation. Otherwise it will not be enticing to the individual. If a farm was leased for a good price 5 years ago that figure would be considered very small at present. What will it be like in 5 or 6 years' time taking into account the way the setting value of land has gone in the past 12 months? It is now about £50 per Irish acre while five or six years ago it was about £10 to £15. I do not think the figure will be quite as high during the next 12 months but we still must build in something realistic. I cannot see them getting full market value but there will be some increase if ordinary prices increase and if there is a certain amount of inflation.
