I would like to have some explanation from the Minister regarding this section. I would like a more explicit definition of the Minister's proposals regarding licences and quotas. If exports of cattle are to be brought under a quota in Great Britain, what procedure is the Minister going to adopt regarding the allotting of quotas to individual exporters from this country? There are over 3,000 exporters directly interested in the live cattle trade or connected with it. How many of these will get licences or quotas? How does the Minister propose to deal with the balance? Is any provision to be made for people whose livelihood may be taken from them if the quota system comes along? When setting up consultative councils what class of people will be nominated on them, and whose recommendations will the Minister take for the members to be put on these councils?
Agricultural Products (Regulation of Export) Bill, 1933—Committee Stage (Resumed).
Cathaoirleach
This section does not deal with consultative councils at all.
Portion of it refers to them. One of the sub-sections deals with quotas and licences for exporters. When we have an explanation from the Minister, we will discuss the amendment at a later stage.
I think I endeavoured to explain this matter rather fully on two or three previous occasions. Something like this will happen. If Great Britain prescribes a quota for cattle, or for any particular class of cattle, for this country, we would then issue an order, under this Bill, setting out in detail the various steps that would be taken. We would, of course, have to follow, more or less, the provisions of this section, by asking those who intended to export cattle to register. I take it that every single person in the trade at present who is exporting would apply for registration. If not, we would take it for granted that they did not want to continue in the trade. They would only have themselves to blame if they did not register. We will take it for granted that all will apply for registration. Having been registered we would send a form to each person asking what quota would be applied for for 1934. Having got the returns, we would tot them, and if the figures did not reach the global quota we got for the trade, we would urge people to go ahead and to export the number applied for.
If the applications were more than the total which we would be entitled to export, we would have to cut them down in some way or other. We come now to the point which I take to be the vital point with Senator Counihan —how we are going to cut them down. In the meantime, we would have set up a consultative council. The consultative councils in the Department of Agriculture are always selected in a certain way. They are always selected by calling the members of the particular interest together but not necessarily in the Department. They are asked to hold a meeting and to submit names to the Minister out of which he could select his consultative council. We did, for instance, call every exporter of pigs and bacon together and we asked them to submit names to us out of which we could select the consultative council, and we would do the same thing in relation to the cattle trade. We would have to ask everybody interested in the cattle trade. Perhaps they could not all be got together at the same time and we might, for instance, get the cattle trade in Cork to submit names, the cattle trade in Limerick to submit names and the cattle trade in Dublin to submit names.
And what about the producers?
Yes, the producers have to come into it too. Having got all those different lists together, we would have to make the best hand we could of giving a fair representation to all the interests concerned. The consultative council having been selected, these applications would be submitted to them and we would point out, say, that we were entitled to export 10,000 cattle every week, but that the applications amounted to 10,500 per week and we would ask the consultative council what, in their opinion, would be the best way to cut them down. When I put that question to the pig and bacon industry they said that the best way to regulate it would be to take the returns over two years and try to base it on those. If we did the same with regard to the cattle exporters, we would ask them to give us returns over two years and if any applicant had then exceeded the trade he had been doing for the previous two years we might bring him down to that and we would eventually get down to the 10,000 figure. If that was not sufficient, however, we might have to make a cut over the whole lot of, say, 5 per cent, but all those steps would be taken in consultation with the consultative council and no individual member of the cattle trade would be wronged in any way. If the members have been doing a certain trade over the last two years and if they are all anxious to carry on exactly the same trade for the next year and if we come along and say "We have to make a 5 per cent. cut on the whole lot" no individual has a grievance above any other. We are treating them all alike. I do not know if that covers the question Senator Counihan has put to me but I think that is the point he wants to get at.
I do not intend to move my amendment but I should like a little further information with regard to the consultative council. 80 per cent. of the cattle bought in the Dublin market at the present time are bought by English nationals or North of Ireland exporters. There is a greater percentage of North of Ireland exporters and I want to know from the Minister if those exporters are going to get licences or is he going to give licences to nobody but Free State nationals. It would be a terrible disaster if the English exporters who have been coming to this country for a lifetime were to be prevented from getting licences. That would lie, to a great extent, with the consultative council and I want to impress on the Minister again the necessity of having a consultative council which would represent all sections of the trade and the producers. He said that licences would only be given to exporters. In that case, where will the producers come in who want to export and who will not have any record of any exports to their credit for the last two years? They will get no exporter's licences and will have to sell their cattle to the exporters no matter what price they offer. I can visualise our quota from Dublin being, say, 3,000 cattle and 5,000 cattle in the Dublin markets and, when that happens, the exporters need not give anything like the market value in the British market because, in all cases, we must remember that prices are regulated by supply and demand and if the supply is one and a half times greater than the demand prices will fall very much. The producers in this case are, in my opinion, more important than the exporters although I do not want to take from the importance of the exporters, because if you have not got producers you will not require any exporters. With regard to the setting up of the consultative council, I think the Minister should give us some assurance that the producers will have equal representation with the exporters. If he wants to keep the balance of power in favour of the Government, he could take powers to appoint three but I think that he should definitely state that he will have an equal number of producers and exporters on that council.
I have not, of course, considered the matter of the cattle consultative council very much yet. We have been working on other consultative councils but we have not come to the cattle council. I do not know that it would be advisable—it might, perhaps, when we come to consider it —to have an equal number of producers and exporters because, after all, it is the exporters who would be mainly concerned in giving the advice. I do think it would be necessary to have producers on them so that their point of view might be expressed and so that the whole business would not be run in the interests of the exporters but in regard to the details upon which we want information and advice, in reference to the month of the year, for instance, in which cattle had best be exported, the place to which they had best be exported and the type of cattle that should be exported during that particular month and to that particular place and all sorts of little details like that, I think the exporters would be more valuable to us on the technical points, at any rate.
Will they not have the recommending of the persons who are to get licences?
Yes, they will, as long as things are going smoothly, as I explained, I think, yesterday, but under this Bill the Minister for Agriculture should always have to take full responsibility. If any particular exporter thinks that he is not getting a fair deal it is the Minister he is going to blame, so that the Minister will have to take full responsibility and will have to consider any appeals made to him by an individual exporter that he is not getting a fair deal. He will, perhaps, from time to time, have to go to a consultative council and ask them to explain why such a quota was given. Senator Counihan also raised a point with regard to producers coming in to the export business themselves. That, of course, is a great difficulty under all quota systems. In every country there is that same difficulty of new people coming into the trade. In some places, they provide for that by allotting a small percentage—perhaps 2½ or 5 per cent.—of the whole quota for new applicants who would be considered as suitable to enter the trade. They give them a certain small quota to start with and if they make good, as some of the existing members fall out of business, they gradually build up a small quota. It is a very difficult question and one on which I should not like to give any definite view now. It is a question that arose in connection with the pig and bacon conference and the people in that trade were quite willing to give a fair consideration to any new person entering the trade. It was a simpler matter there, because a person coming in to the trade could show a bacon factory and it was good evidence of his bona fides, but a person who wants to start in the cattle trade has no premises or buildings to show and one cannot be very sure whether he is genuine or not. It is, therefore, more difficult to deal with new people in the cattle trade than in the bacon trade. In all countries, however, in which they had to deal with quotas, they had that difficulty and had various ways of getting over it. It is a matter that will have to be considered as a new question put to the cattle trade consultative council when it arises.
I am not raising the question of new people coming in to the cattle trade. I want to point out that producers who are not satisfied with the prices they are getting should have permission to export their own produce and should get a licence for that purpose. That is the point I want to make. Last year, when the bounties came on, a large percentage of the cattle producers in the country exported their own cattle. They have not had any export trade for, perhaps ten years and some of them never exported in their lives before. I contend that the producer of livestock should get a licence as well as the ordinary cattle trader. You can confine it, if you like, to the export of his own produce, but he should have the right to get a licence to export that produce. That is what I want to impress on the Minister as being a matter that should be considered.
I should like to say that I think that the matter which Senator Counihan is raising now is a matter that could possibly be raised when the Order is laid on the Table with regard to cattle. All the details will be set out then and it can be discussed. This Bill really gives permission to lay an Order on the Table. All the details will be in that Order, and when it is laid on the Table these details can be discussed.
Cathaoirleach
You could not hope to make it quite watertight now, Senator, as regards producers, cattle traders and exporters, who are also producers. The question is very difficult and complicated and you could hardly expect the Minister to decide it now.
Might I suggest for the consideration of Senator Counihan and his friends that the powers given to the Ministry in sub-section (1) of Section 3 could well be adapted to meet that kind of case, that is to say, that either the Minister in person or a co-operative organisation of the producers who are not satisfied with the prices they are getting could enter that business and could get a quota as a mass organisation?
Yes, but the large producers know what they can expect from the present Government.
Every consideration.
This is designed for the next Government.
Would the Minister answer my point with regard to English nationals?
As a matter of fact, there is a Government amendment on the Paper which is really put down to meet that point. I will deal with it on Report Stage if the Senator will leave it over.