Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 30 Nov 1938

Vol. 22 No. 4

Dairy Produce (Price Stabilisation) (Amendment) Bill, 1938—Second Stage.

Question proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Minister for Agriculture (Dr. Ryan)

The legislation dealing with the stabilisation of butter prices was first introduced in 1933. An amending Act was passed in 1935. As a result of our experience of the administration of those Acts, I think it can be said that, as far as the creamery industry is concerned, there was general satisfaction, and that the legislation fulfilled its purpose. But with regard to non-creamery butter, it was difficult to administer and much more costly, in proportion, than the administration of the creamery industry. The collection of levies on non-creamery butter was suspended on 1st January, 1937. The suspension of the levies renders the registration of dealers in non-creamery butter unnecessary. Part II of the Principal Act makes it mandatory on the Minister to keep registers of dealers in non-creamery butter, and makes it an offence for persons to carry on business unless they are so registered.

Paragraphs (d) and (e) of sub-section (1) of Section 17 of the principal Act relate to the payment of levies by producers and distributors of non-creamery butter. The purpose of Sections 2 and 3 of the present Bill is to enable the Minister to suspend the operation of this provision of the Principal Act as and when he considers it desirable. It will be noted that the power of suspension is made retrospective. It is intended to have the suspension made operative back to the 1st January, 1937. I would like to say that this is a matter that was raised in the other House and that possibly may be raised by Senators—the power given to the Minister to suspend certain parts of the Act.

I would like to point out that under the Principal Act the Minister has power to suspend the collection of levies, which was a very important matter, and all that is asked under this Bill is that he should also have power to suspend the keeping of a register when these levies are not being collected.

Section 4 of this Bill deals with collection of levies and specifies the classes of those from whom these levies can be collected. In the case of creamery butter, the levy is collected from the creamery. In the case of non-creamery butter, it is collected only from certain classes, that is persons registered in the register of butter manufacturers or non-manufacturing exporters, or, in the register of dealers in non-creamery butter, provided for by Part II of the Principal Act. This latter register, as I have already mentioned, is not being kept since the 1st January, 1937, and it is not intended that it should be kept. The fact that levy was only collectable from certain specified persons made it difficult at times to get what I believed we should get, when there was a change of price.

For instance, if butter is put up in price—on the 1st May we put butter up by twopence a lb.—we could collect a levy of the same amount from non-manufacturing exporters and from butter factories if they happened to have butter on hands, but we could not collect from wholesalers and retailers who might possibly have large quantities of butter on hands. Owing to the fact that we could not collect levies, a very big profit was made by people who had these heavy stocks. We want the power to collect in future from those carrying big stocks of butter when there is a change in price. The levy would go into the butter stabilisation fund and would be placed there for the benefit of producers in general.

Section 5 deals with certificates of registration. Power was taken under the Principal Act to give any person a certificate of registration if he so desired, but that was never availed of and as there is no likelihood that it ever will be availed of, the section is being dropped.

Section 6 deals with the payment of levies on cream. Where a person pays a levy on cream and sells it to another person, under the present legislation it would appear we would have to collect a levy from both people, and where it might afterwards be converted into butter it appears we might have to collect also. This Section 6 is to make that right and to say that only one levy is collectable and that the cream can be sold to another person afterwards even though there would not be a levy collected afterwards.

Section 7 deals with the amendment of a levy order. We have, in the past, felt that it would be convenient if we reduced a levy during a levy period, that is, retrospectively. It is rather a difficult problem to forecast what the export market for butter will be like in advance, but, in order to make this stabilised price for butter, we have to make the best forecast we can. We arrange what the levy collectable on butter sold at home should be and we arrange what the bounty should be on butter exported. If we are wrong in our calculations and if butter goes lower than we had thought, we must put up with that and try to make it right in the next levy period, but, if butter increases in price on the export market, we feel we should be in a position to give the benefit of that increase to the producer. We have no such power at present and we are asking for power to make orders reducing the levy and, therefore, collecting less than we had anticipated.

Sections 8, 9 and 10 deal with butter coming in to the country. We have not much butter coming in but on a few occasions we had to import butter towards the end of the season. We regard the butter season as running from the 1st April to 31st March. Sometimes in the month of March in the past two years we had to import a certain amount of butter. We have not allowed importers to bring in that butter and sell it at prices at home which would bring them a big profit, so that in order to allow whatever profit we can, we take a levy off the butter coming in and the proceeds are brought into this stabilisation fund. Again, we have to forecast there. The power I am asking for in this Bill is that we should be allowed to reduce that levy afterwards. The way that will operate will probably be something like this: We give a permit to a person to bring in butter. We have no idea how the market may go in the month of March, as we have to give the permits at the beginning of the month. We put on a fairly high levy, say, 60/-, knowing it is far too high, but, when we come to collect the levy at the end of the month we know what the price was coming in and the price at the time the allowance was made, so we then reduce the levy to what we think would be a fair amount.

In that way we get what is fair, and at the same time we allow the importer an ordinary profit. Just like Section 7, where power is sought to reduce a levy retrospectively, we want the same power under Section 11, reciprocal power, if you like. We want power to increase retrospectively a bounty at the end of the levy period. As I said already, we fix the bounty and the levy on a forecast of what conditions in the foreign market are likely to be. We find that, perhaps, we have got more from the levy than we expected, and we may find that at the end of the period we have more money than we anticipated and that we could afford to pay out more; therefore we are asking for power to pay out a higher bounty than we had announced, but not for power to pay less. We are giving the benefit, in other words, to the producer, and we are not asking for power to reduce the bounty.

Section 12 deals with offences regarding minimum prices. Hitherto only the seller was guilty of an offence. I think it only reasonable that the buyer should be considered guilty of an offence also. Frequently he is often more wealthy. The buyer is often a man with means, and he tempts the poorer creamery with ready cash and induces that creamery to sell to him below the fixed minimum price. Up to this, the creamery could be fined for committing an offence like that, but we could not do anything against the purchaser. This Bill will enable us to do it.

Section 13 deals with a small omission in a section of the Principal Act which makes it an offence to give false information as well as an offence not to give information at all.

I have dealt with this Bill section by section because it is a Bill by reference and there is no underlying principle. It deals with a number of matters, and that is why I have gone through it section by section.

Mr. J.G. Douglas

There is one section to which I would like to draw the Minister's attention. I am not an expert in dairy produce; I know very little about it, but Section 2, sub-section (4) is of a misleading character. If you examine it carefully by looking up the Interpretation Act, you will find that it does not really do what it appears to do on the surface. It appears to give the Minister power to repeal an Act of the Oireachtas. Actually, it provides that when there is an Order regarding certain suspendible provisions it will have the effect as though they were repealed while that order was in force. That is for the purpose of connecting it with Section 21 of the Interpretation Act.

Several people drew my attention to this section, believing that it was giving the Minister power to do what only the Oireachtas can do. When I examined it, I found it was simply a matter of the lazy drafting that we have had sometimes. I want to say that it may be in the interests of the legal profession, but that it makes it very difficult for the ordinary person to read the Bill and understand it, when Section 21, sub-sections (1) and (2), which are comparatively short, are not also set out. They provide that when an Act is repealed you will still be able to deal with certain things up to the date of repeal. Instead of doing that, we refer back to an Act, which makes it bewildering to an ordinary member of the public.

On several occasions I have drawn attention to this habit of referring back to other Acts, even when it would be quite simple—a matter of only 20 or 30 lines or so—to print the relevant provisions in relation to the new provisions. I intended to move an amend ment in the Committee Stage and, if there is time, I probably will, to insert a provision of that nature instead of the Section as it stands. I suppose it is not very important, but I would urge that that kind of drafting gives a wrong impression, and certainly four or five people, including one prominent person, drew attention to this, thinking that the Minister was now taking power to repeal. Instead, the Minister is taking power to say that, for certain purposes, an Order will have the same effect as if it were repealed—rather a careless form of drafting.

Mr. P.F. Baxter

There is not, I take it, going to be any objection to the Minister getting the Second Reading of this Bill. It is, indeed, a very strange sort of measure and, on the whole, it is giving the Minister powers of a kind which perhaps some people feel ought not to be given to him. But, as far as the Minister has exercised his powers in his relationship to the dairying industry, he is certainly looked upon as a benevolent dictator, although it is true that the dairying industry, as a whole, has thought at various periods that the Minister ought to have done more, and that there was a necessity to do more for it, than has been done.

On the other hand, it has been conceded to the Minister that he has done much, and had he not pursued the policy which he has been pursuing, the conditions of the dairy farmers would be much worse than they have been. They are very far from being ideal, and there is no use in pretending here that the return to the dairy farmer for his milk this year, last year, or over a number of years, has been anything like adequate. It is somewhat better this year than last year, but still there are other considerations, as far as the dairy farmer is concerned, that have been responsible, in fact, for depreciating prices this year to a level just as low as last year. On the other hand, I believe that the costs have outweighed any increase given to him. Nevertheless, the dairy farmers generally realise that, although it is undesirable to give powers like this to the Minister, the industry is passing through such a difficult period that there is no alternative but to give the Minister the measure which will be as flexible as is necessary to protect the interests of the producers and, at the same time, give reasonable safeguards to the consumers at home. For that reason there is not going to be any exception taken to what the Minister is asking the right to do in these various sections in the amendment of the Principal Act.

There is a point, however, that has been brought to the notice of the Minister before—it is an important point in certain dairying districts—and that is the position of the farmers who have tried to go in for a bit of winter dairying. Neither the Minister nor anyone else who has any acquaintance with the conditions will pretend that you can produce milk in winter at anything like the same price as in the summer months or in the harvest. There are farmers in certain districts who make an effort to do a bit of winter dairying. I am convinced that we will never put our dairying industry on the plane where it must be if it is to compete successfully with the Danes unless we can go in for winter dairying to a much greater extent than we have attempted up to the present. We must realise that you cannot feed cattle in the house, with the labour entailed and the cost of foodstuffs, at the price at which you can do it during the summer or harvest.

A week ago a plea was made here for the stall-feeding industry. It was argued—and rightly so, I believe—that to encourage stall-feeding was to encourage tillage, and, further, that it would give additional employment around the farmstead during the winter; that you were going to make manures and all that which are very necessary in mixed farming. Winter dairying will do exactly the same thing. But you will not get milk from your cows to-day merely by going out and feeding them in the morning. You must feed them the month before and the month before that. It is time for the Administration to face up to that problem. I know it can be argued that it is going to cost a great deal of money. It is true that at present in certain of our Northern districts winter dairying is being carried on—small farmers are doing it. I am convinced that they are not being adequately repaid for what they are putting into it. I, therefore, make a plea for these districts. They are really the poorest dairying districts in the country. The Minister ought to make an effort to give some added compensation for the extra food and labour entailed in winter dairying.

There is no necessity to argue this at any length. The Minister must get this Bill. There is no opposition to it here and there is no opposition to it in the country. The Minister's efforts are appreciated by the dairy farmers. While saying that, it is well that the House should understand that the dairying industry, for those who have their milk manufactured at creameries, is not giving to the farmers anything like an adequate return. The added costs of labour this year, due to legislation which we cannot go into now, have made difficulties for the dairying farmers with which they were not confronted before. I put it to the Minister that, in the interests of dairying in the poorer districts, he ought to consider making concessions to them out of this fund. If the money be not available from this fund, the Exchequer should find the necessary money to keep these people in winter dairying. I believe others would be encouraged to go into winter dairying too. I am convinced that our dairy farmers everywhere must go into it before our dairy products on the British market will get back to the position they once occupied there.

Mr. MacCabe

The Minister mentioned the importation of butter during the winter months. I am sure the Minister is aware that we produce butter in May, June and July second to none in the world. He has quite a number of inspectors going around the country and why not have a sufficient quantity of this butter made in May, June and July and cold-stored to meet the requirements of the consumers in this country? I think there should be no difficulty in having that done. We are aware that in May, June and July the price of butter is at its lowest level in this country. For that reason, if the butter was cold-stored and a sufficient price got for it, it would, to a great extent, tide over the lean months of the year.

I agree with what has been said by the last speaker with regard to winter dairying. Unless some encouragement is given to the feeding of cattle and the production of food, I do not think there is any hope for winter dairying in the greater part of the country. I hope that the Minister will give due consideration to the views of dairying farmers in this House and that he will see his way in the coming season to assist the dairy farmers as far as possible.

Dr. Doyle

As Senator Baxter has raised the question, I should like to impress on the Minister that if we are to increase our butter production we must have winter dairying. We must also almost double the amount of milk produced by our cows. The Minister should do something to increase the amount of milk given by our cows. Out of a total of 1,500,000 cows in this country, we have only 48,000 in our cow-testing associations, and the number has been practically the same for the last 20 years. Something should be done to increase the number of cows in the cow-testing associations. The average yield of milk per cow over the whole country is 450 gallons, while inside the cow-testing associations the thousand-gallon cow is common. Inside the cow-testing associations the average yield per cow would be, roughly, 600 gallons. Therefore, if you want to have winter dairying a practical proposition, something must be done in that matter. I do not like to say that there should be compulsion, but the Department of Agriculture could do a great deal by means of education and propaganda. We should really have 750,000 cows, or half the number in the country, tested and the low yielders eliminated. It is only then that we can talk about winter dairying as a practical proposition.

Sir John Keane

I do not propose to enter into a general discussion of rural economy. I am not going to have the first encounter with the Minister in the new Seanad. I am afraid I sometimes rather rubbed him up the wrong way in the past. The Minister, I notice, made a very interesting statement in the Dáil. He said that a Government did business better than private people. I hope I have not taken him up wrong.

If this Bill is an indication of doing business, the business is getting more and more complicated, and I admit the Government does business. The Government is working in the best way to carry on, inasmuch as you are patching and stopping leaks and adapting yourselves to new discover ies. The whole of our code for agricultural control is one mass of regu lations. You have only to look at the number of regulations on the Order Paper when the Seanad meets. I think there were 28 Agricultural Produce Orders or it may be 28 Industry and Commerce Orders. The whole thing is complicated by regulations. Will the Minister consider getting away from that sort of thing? Will he, at least, admit that it is most undesirable? The farmer, instead of being benefited, is suffering tremendously. Might I suggest to the Minister that he wants perhaps a different outlook on the whole problem.

I see by to-day's papers where, in Germany, Dr. Schacht comments on this. He says that they are paying a heavy price for it and that he thoroughly sympathises with the exporter who has to fill up 40 forms before he can do business. We are almost in that position to-day. We cannot do any business without filling up forms. The Minister tells us that it is for all our good that we should do so. Dr. Schacht at least holds out the hope to the people of Germany that, before long they will be able to free business from all this intolerable burden of control and get back to a certain degree of liberty of action. Following along that line, will the Minister consider whether these benefits which he claims to have given to agriculture should not be given in a much simpler and satisfying way. Agriculture has to be helped. Instead of all these regulations could he not go back to something like further relief from the burden of rates and even of annuities? If you give benefits in that way, you get rid of a host of officials and a whole code of complicated laws. I would ask whether the Minister is any way thinking along these lines—of getting rid of all these regulations and of this control, and getting back to simpler and more direct benefits which all will benefit by, which will be readily understood, and more simply administered.

I ask the Minister if he has noticed the figures recently given in the Milk Bill in England for the cost of milk production. There the cost of milk production is in the region of from 9d. to 10d. per gallon. I do not know if the Minister has any expert costings to confirm these figures. If he has, we should like to know what they are; because, on the basis on which the farmers are now paid for milk, there must be something very beneficial in the form of production here which enables them to exist at all with the price they are getting.

Professor Johnston

I had not intended to take any part in this debate, but I should like to re-echo the sentiment of the last speaker, who pleaded for a simpler programme of legislation and regulation dealing with this whole matter. I am so overwhelmed by the complicated legislation affecting the butter business that I have delayed and postponed indefinitely the task of attempting to understand it. Perhaps my task would be rendered completely unnecessary if the Minister would accept the advice of Senator Sir John Keane and hasten the day when we shall get back to a simpler commerce in butter. To a certain extent, I suppose, we were committed by the policy of the last few years, which all Parties in the Oireachtas seem to have supported, to pay something very special, at the expense of the taxpayer and the consumer, to enable the dairying industry to obtain a higher price for its products than would have been possible in the conditions of commerce that existed during those years. We may as well realise that, in doing that, we, as consumers and taxpayers, have, in fact, been helping to pay part of John Bull's butter bill—a very Christian act of altruism on our part for which we should, I think, obtain high marks. I do not know whether it is the permanent policy of the nation that we should continue indefinitely to pay our neighbours for buying our produce but, as an economist, I should welcome the day when our neighbours would pay the whole cost of the produce we think it worth our while to send them.

Another aspect of this butter legislation is that, under it, a fixed price is maintained for the produce of the creameries. The price may not fall below a certain figure and, in this Bill, a penalty is not only imposed on the seller below that minimum but on the person who buys below that minimum. I should like to know how that fixed price—which, presumably, applies to the products of all creameries—reacts on the efficiency of the creameries. If the inefficient creamery is going to get the same fixed price for butter as the efficient creamery, why trouble to improve in efficiency? I should like to have some assurance from the Minister that this phenomenon of fixed price is not tending to undermine the efficiency with which butter is produced in some of our creameries.

I sympathise profoundly with the remarks made by Senator Baxter about the desirability of promoting winter dairying. If we must have levies on taxpayers and consumers and interference with the ordinary course of commerce, I should gladly sweep away all payment in respect of butter produced or exported during the summer months and concentrate on payment for butter produced, whether exported or not, during the winter months. In that way we should be giving a very definite fillip to the development of winter dairying in every part of the country, both north and south. I think that the future of tillage and the efficiency in farming, generally, is closely related to this desirable policy —the development of winter dairying. As every farmer knows, we cannot have winter dairying without tillage.

Doctor Kennedy, of the I.A.O.S., has been a propagandist of the necessity for improving in every way the efficiency of our dairying industry. I see that he points out in a recent pamphlet that our milk production is only 420 gallons per cow as against 700 to 750 gallons per cow in Holland, Denmark and New Zealand. He says that the chief reason for that disgracefully low average output is that our farmers are in the habit of starving their cows in the winter. If the State must have an economic policy, by all means have one which rewards the farmer for feeding his cows in the winter time. If we could develop some policy of winter dairying, even at the expense of the taxpayer, I think we would do a great deal to ensure the proper feeding of cows in the winter as well as in the summer. In the summer they feed on the grass which nature provides, but in winter, if the cows are milking, the chances are that they will be fed, whereas, if they are dry, the temptation to starve them is irresistible.

Dr. Ryan

Senator Douglas raised a question with regard to sub-section (4) of Section 2. The drafting may appear somewhat drastic, but the powers given in this sub-section are not in any way different from the powers given in many other Bills. In many Acts, the Minister is given power to suspend the operations of an Act under certain conditions and in certain eventualities. Under the Principal Act the Minister was given power to suspend the collection of levies or the payment of bounties at certain times. What is asked here is very small compared with that—that is, that I should have power to suspend the keeping of a register where no levies are being collected from a certain class. The thing looks, perhaps, much worse than it is. It deals with a very small matter. The principle may be objectionable, but it is being applied to a very small matter.

Senator Baxter spoke of the price. I am quite prepared to agree with any Senator who says the price is not adequate. It is not as high as we should all like it to be, but it is a great improvement on the price of former years. It will, I think, be found that for the present year—1st April, 1938, to 31st March, 1939—the average price paid by the creameries will work out at about 5½d. per gallon, with the skimmed milk going back. A few years ago, demands were being made in both Houses that we should try to bring the price up to 5d. per gallon. Perhaps the farmers would like to get more than they visualised at that time, but the price is now much better than they thought of at that time. Our butter is not on the British market to any great extent now, but the best Australian commands about 98/- there, while the price our creameries are getting for their butter is 135/-. That is a considerable addition to what might be regarded as the world price.

Senator McCabe says that the price of butter is at its lowest in May, June and July. Generally speaking, that is true, but, this year, the reverse appears to be the case. During May, June and July of this year, butter was 114/-. Now it is 98/-. We did store a lot of butter in May, June and July, according to the advice now given by Senator McCabe. It might now be held that if we had stored less and sold more of it at that time, we would have done better. Taking the last few years, however, Senator McCabe is right in his contention. Butter was stored in the summer, and we imported some at the end of the season. We did not import very much—4,000 or 5,000 cwts. —less than a week's total supply. We think it will not be necessary to import any during the present winter.

Senator Doyle raised the question of yield. We all admit that the yield of our cows is very low. We believe that if we could get our farmers into milk-testing societies something would be achieved, because they would see demonstrated the yields of the bad cows and the good cows. I never knew a farmer who went into a milk-testing society who knew beforehand which cow was best and which was worst. He is always completely mistaken until he gets his cows tested. But it is extremely difficult to get farmers into milk-testing societies. About three years ago we lightened the burden of farmer-members by paying more from State funds for their membership. That, however, did not improve matters very much. The membership may increase now if farmers see that better prices will be realised than they were getting then.

As regards the general remarks of Sir John Keane, I did say in the Dáil, when challenged, that the Government did business as well as, or perhaps better than, private enterprise. I had in mind the creameries run by the Dairy Disposals Board under Government auspices. They are run very well, they are paying a good price, and are giving great satisfaction. They are being run as well as private enterprise could run them. That may not be an argument that everything should be taken over by the Government, but it is an argument against the plea that the Government should not do anything of this nature. What we are doing may be empirical, but it must be remembered that we must bring in Bills and try to foresee all the things that are likely to arise. If we do not foresee those things we have to bring in another Bill. A business man has not to do this. As things arise he meets them. He meets them in his own office. He has not to come to the Seanad and tell them of his difficulties. We have to do that, and we have to bring in amending Bills, so that it is not fair to compare our position in that regard with that of the business man. We should be wonderful business men in the Government if we could foresee everything, and a private business man would be a wonderful man if he could go away for 20 years, telling his manager not to make a single change in his absence and yet expecting him to make profits in the meantime. It would be unfair to put that burden on the manager. Yet that is what is expected of the Government when they are told that they, having brought in a Bill, should not bring in an amending Bill.

Perhaps we should not interfere much with exporters, but we believe we are interfering with them to their benefit—to give them subsidies. If we did not interfere with them they would get 114/- most of the year for their butter and 98/- at present. We interfere to give them 135/- instead of 98/-. I admit that our legislation looks terribly complicated, but the producer is not very much troubled about legislation. He knows that he is going to get 135/-. The consumer knows what he is going to pay for his butter. Changes are made very infrequently, and I believe that anybody who examines the matter will find that in the case of no commodity on the market does the producer or the consumer get such good value. The "spread" between what the producer gets and what the consumer pays is very small. Wholesaler and retailer get what we regard as a fair profit, but they do not get an exorbitant profit. The consumer gets very good value, considering what the producer gets. In that way the producer and the consumer know where they stand, and are not bothered by this legislation. The legislation is rather involved because it is difficult to deal with some people. They are able to get round some things, and it is necessary to bring in amending Bills to deal with them.

Whatever may be said about subsidies, in general, for agriculture, there may be a lot in what Senator Sir John Keane said—that it would be much simpler to reduce costs of production generally—rates and annuities—and let things take their course. Yet, I think a case can be made for a specific subsidy for the dairying industry. I am afraid that, if we were to drop subsidies altogether and reduce rates and annuities, the people would change from dairying into some other form of agriculture because, comparatively speaking, they would not do as well at world prices by producing butter as they would in other branches of agriculture. I think that a case can, therefore, be made for specific help for the dairying industry, whatever we might think of subsidies in general.

I cannot answer Senator Sir John Keane as to the cost of milk production in this country. It is very difficult to get costings in agriculture. Roughly speaking, we have to take the test that, when we are increasing production, the producer is doing well and, when we are going down in production, we have to take it that the product is not paying. If there is an increase, we take it that it is paying. That is about the only rough test I can think of, and it is perhaps the most satisfactory test, too.

Senator Johnston makes a plea for simple legislation, but again I do not think the people concerned are very much troubled about complicated legislation. It is, I admit, rather unfair to members of the Seanad to have an academic Bill like this done altogether by reference, but that is a thing I am afraid I cannot help. I should like very much if the draftsmen had time to have a Bill of this kind drafted in a more simple way—in fact to repeal all previous Dairy Produce Acts or Dairy Price Stabilisation Acts, to bring in a new comprehensive Bill, and to place the whole matter before the Dáil and Seanad. I think it is a matter of time in the draftsman's office more than anything else.

The argument is advanced at times: "Why should we pay part of John Bull's butter bill?" I could never be quite clear on that question myself, but I do suggest that if we were to say to John Bull: "We do not intend to pay part of your butter bill any longer," and if we still wanted a good price for our butter, I think John Bull could say: "We do not want your butter; we can get plenty of butter from New Zealand, Australia and Denmark, and we can do quite well without any of your butter." It is a choice of subsidising our exports to Great Britain and of supporting them on the home market by getting our consumers to pay more than the world price, or of facing a very big decline indeed in the dairying industry. Therefore, it is a matter of academic interest whether we are paying part of John Bull's butter bill or not. We are accused of being altruistic. I suppose, if we are subsidising exports to John Bull, it is as well to take the credit for doing it, rather than say that we are doing it because we cannot help it, which is nearer the truth.

I should like to assure Senator Johnston that the inefficient creamery does not always get away with inefficiency. On the home market, it is true, there is a minimum price fixed, but the efficient creameries can demand a little more if they like, and sometimes they get a little more, but where the difference does come in is on the export market. When we pay a subsidy on butter exports, we take an average of the best sellers, and we cut out those at the very end. We take the best sellers, and we pay the subsidy on the average, so that in fact the best seller gets more than the minimum price and the bad seller gets a shilling or two less. In that way the efficient creamery gets more for its butter than the inefficient creamery.

A case might be made for pooling all the benefits and putting them on winter production. That is a very big question. I am afraid that although it might look a fair thing to do and a good thing to do, we would have a very big decline in the principal dairying districts if we were to follow that course. I do not believe that any inducement, unless it were some ridiculous one in the way of price, would get the Limerick farmers to go in for winter production. If the Limerick farmers, however, are not getting an adequate price for summer-produced butter, they will go out of production, to some extent anyway. We would inevitably, I am afraid, have a decline in dairying production, if we were not to give some subsidy, at least at present prices, on summer production.

I hope when this Bill is through to be able to do more for winter production this year. That is one of the reasons why I am anxious to get the Bill through. I intend to ask the Seanad to facilitate me in getting this Bill through quickly because the time is at hand when we should be making the winter price if we can. That winter price can be made by giving a subsidy on production or by reducing the levy. There is only a levy of a shilling now and to reduce that would not be any great advantage. On the other hand, we could increase the price of butter to the retailer. Whatever we do, it will be necessary to have this Bill passed quickly if we are to prevent profiteering by certain wholesalers and retailers who hold rather large stocks. I should not like to make any change until this Bill is through but I do intend to try to do something more for winter production, as soon as we have this legislation through both Houses.

Question put and agreed to.

Dr. Ryan

I should like if the Seanad would facilitate me in passing all stages of the Bill now.

Agreed.

Bill passed through Committee and reported to the House without amendment.

Question proposed: "That the Bill be received for final consideration."

Sir John Keane

I should like to ask the Minister if the general questions we have been discussing of regulation in agriculture and of direct benefits, are going to be referred to this new commission that, I understand, is being appointed to survey the whole agricultural problem. I should also like to know when this new commission is likely to be appointed and get to work.

Dr. Ryan

I should like to assure the Senator that the terms of reference of this commission will be very wide. I think I mentioned in the Dáil, that the terms of reference will be somewhat on the lines suggested there—to recommend methods for increasing agricultural production. Practically everything will come under that heading. I expect to have the commission appointed before Christmas. I am doubtful if it can meet before Christmas, but if not, I hope it can meet very soon afterwards. The commission can consider the questions raised by Senator Keane with regard to general regulation, production and burdens in regard to agriculture, and recommend whatever benefits may be necessary. On the other hand, I do not think we could wait and leave agriculture as it is, until the commission reports. I hope, as a matter of fact, that we may be in a position shortly to make some pronouncements with regard to benefits that we have in mind for the agricultural community.

Question put and agreed to.

Question: "That the Bill do now pass," put and agreed to.