I wish to thank you for affording me the opportunity of raising this very urgent public matter on the Adjournment. I should like to know at the outset why the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries is not here tonight. He is one of the people who has taken a particularly stubborn line on this and he should be here. He is one of the people who, during the past week, have consistently refused to meet members of the veterinary profession.
This strike is of fairly recent origin. It was because of the attitude with which the veterinary profession were treated by the Department officials and the Minister that the present situation has arisen. The Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries in a parliamentary reply to me two weeks ago, without any provocation used the word "irresponsible" in respect of a group that had already postponed their strike earlier in the year. Vincent Browne, in an article in The Irish Times of last Thursday week, took a small quotation from a statement made by the Minister and it reads as follows:
I chose this time for a strike.
It was, therefore, the Minister who in effect called the strike and gave reasons why a strike would have been better at this time. Surely with a shortage of grass at the moment and with the glut of cattle that will arise due to this strike, can we say at this stage who is responsible and who is irresponsible? The veterinary profession already put back their strike last February and only decided to go ahead with it when confronted by the Minister on 16th May and told:
"This is my decision. There will be no discussion; there will be no negotiations." That was said despite the promise made to give the veterinary profession four months' notice of such an intention. The Minister announced that publicly on 16th May and also in conversations with the President of the Veterinary Association.
What was the Minister's attitude some time ago to the veterinary profession? Speaking at a dinner of the IVA on 29th September, 1973, Mr. Clinton said that we depend on the veterinary practitioners, that he had faith in their ability to deliver the goods, that as long as they continue to do so he would offer them full involvement in State programmes for disease eradication over at least the next five years, that he would encourage them to make plans accordingly, that their State work and private practice could be serviced amicably and expeditiously.
Those are the people the Minister praised: he now calls them irresponsible. While the possibilities were there of the strike being averted, the Minister has ruled them out. It has now made some of the veterinary surgeons, who were very moderate and reasonable people, hard and bitter in this strike. No such language was used to any other worker. When the dockers in Dublin gave notice of strike this week, the Minister for Labour acted on Friday night, yet the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries has refused to accept the services of a mediator. This is stubbornness and pig-headedness at this stage. Although he denied it to me, the Minister already had been offered a mediator on the previous night. He has since been offered mediators and has refused. The Irish Veterinary Union are prepared to meet and talk with him but he refuses to act. The consequences of his action are that 2,000 people were laid off from employment last week. At the present moment we have reports from all over the country that up to 8,000 workers will be let go at the end of this week. The action to avert that type of lay-off which would add to the 103,000 people already unemployed a further 8,000 plus all the service jobs that will go with that, is now in the hands of the Minister, but he is refusing to do anything about it.
It is not a question of lay technicians being involved in this. The Department of Agriculture have tried to emphasise this point and have continually said that lay technicians could do the work, and I stress the words they used, better and cheaper. I will argue that later on, but at this stage I would like to explain the position in which the veterinary surgeon finds himself in a rural practice. First, he is not now being called generally by farmers except in cases of grave necessity and of extreme urgency. Most of the work he is doing is heavier, the handling type of work. The veterinary practitioner who wishes to earn a high income must be prepared to work by day or night, suffer many injuries in the course of his work and he must be always available in all kinds of weather. He has to bear the cost of his own transport, surgical implements and medical equipment. He spent five years going through a costly university course to get into that profession. If a veterinary surgeon becomes ill today, it is at his own expense. If he decides to take a holiday, that, too, is at his own expense. As he grows older he will lose the potential for earning in private practice and indeed will not be up to the mark for the competition with younger vets. Of course, his general practice is also affected by the trend we have here today, the reduction in the price of animals.
The Department have thrown all the muck that it was necessary to throw at the veterinary profession last week when they announced that £24,000 was made by one veterinary surgeon. I am sure every Member of this House, and every member of the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries in particular, including the Minister, knows that no veterinary surgeon was capable of earning £24,000 in one year. In fact, the man who was referred to has five assistants to whom he has to supply five cars, pay for petrol for the five cars, pay for secretaries and pay for his own administration costs. That was particularly irresponsible of the Department and, indeed, of the departmental officials who were involved in this. I believe that the Minister has been totally misled by his officials and, unfortunately, he has now put himself in a corner where he is left with very little room for manoeuvre.
