Section 26 deals with the method of appointment of the county committees of agriculture and affords us an opportunity to discuss the whole position of the county committees of agriculture in the context of the new arrangements. I am not entirely happy with the position. To be fair, it does not derive solely from the present Bill but also from the NAAERA Act of 1977.
I am not happy that the county committees of agriculture have adequate powers to obtain information within specified times. They are being given power to get information, but not power to get it within a particular, stated time. They are not being given power to get information from all the people, from whom they should be able to get information to enable them to do their job properly.
On the question of voluntary organisations to be represented on the county committees, we will now have a substantial number of people from farming organisations on the county committees in addition to people selected by the county councillors. I am not happy at the way in which this is to be done. I am not sure that I could put forward an alternative proposal, but there are certain doubts which must be raised about the proposal in the Bill.
The number of members to be nominated by each such rural organisation active within the county shall be such as the Minister may by order determine. A number of farming organisations may be active in a particular county, for example, the ICA, Macra na Feirme, the Irish Farmers' Association and the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association. Those four organisations are all active in my county. There are also other organisations such as the Small Farmers Defence, the Land League, and so on.
Who is to decide the relative strength of these organisations? The Minister for Agriculture. What evidence will he have on which to make his decision? We do not know. Will he go on membership figures? That would mean he would have to get membership returns from each of the organisations. If he does not go on membership figures, what other basis has he got to go on other than his own purely subjective judgment? If it is to be done on the basis of the Minister's subjective judgment that one organisation is more important than another, the Minister will either be put in an invidious and awkward position, in that he will have to make decisions about bodies and their strength, bodies with which he has to negotiate, as against other organisations which would be very difficult for him, or he will have the temptation to pursue a line of favouritism and to give one organisation more than it is entitled to because he gets on better with that organisation.
I am not saying the Minister would do that. In fact, I would be very surprised if he did, but the temptation will exist for any Minister operating this Bill in the absence of any objective criteria in the Bill as to how the organisations' relative strength should be assessed in deciding how the voluntary people are to be selected. There are no objective criteria in the Bill. I know this situation existed in the previous Bill but this will put whoever is operating the Bill in an awkward position. He will be involved, so to speak, in local farming politics in every county in Ireland. He will have to examine the relative strength in each county of each farming organisation before he decides how many votes to give them. Obviously you could not apply the same principles in one of the Munster counties as you might apply in Meath, Westmeath or Roscommon. There are going to be differences. One cannot see far ahead what is going to happen in these various organisations. The Minister should not be put in this awkward position. Something should be contained in the Bill which would give the Minister a definite line to go on in making the decisions. How is this to be done?
The other point I want to make relates to the powers of county committees of agriculture. These powers are contained in section 36 of the 1977 Act and the committees have power to review and to make recommendations to the Minister regarding the programmes and so forth of the operations in the county. Of course, anybody in the world has power to make recommendations to the Minister, and so telling the committees that they have power to make a recommendation is not telling them that they have any more power than any individual in the entire country. If the post is working, presumably any individual who wishes to do so can write a letter to the Minister and make a recommendation. That is not giving anything to the committees. Of course, they are being given the power to request reports from time to time from the chief agricultural officer on the progress of the advisory and educational programme of the county and also to request reports from time to time from the appropriate officers of the Minister about schemes operated by him in the county.
I have two criticisms to make on this, one a major one. The committees have not the power to ask either An Foras Talúntais or An Chomhairle Oiliúna Talmhaíochta for information.