On this section, Sir, perhaps the Minister could give us a little more information on the point he mentioned when he was concluding the debate on the Second Stage of the Bill. He mentioned that it was intended to mark out certain areas for experiment with a view to spreading electricity further into smaller rural communities. I rise now to know whether he would elaborate on that a little more, on this particular opportunity, with a view to telling us what is in mind in that regard and when work of that kind might be expected.
Electricity (Supply) (Amendment) Bill, 1940—Committee and Final Stages.
Section 1 put and agreed to.
SECTION 2.
Question proposed: "That Section 2 stand part of the Bill."
I am afraid, Sir, I shall not be able to elaborate very extensively upon my statement on the Second Stage of this Bill. The position, shortly, is that the Electricity Supply Board, having had under investigation for some time the problems and considerations involved in extending an electricity supply extensively to the rural districts in the country, have come to the conclusion that the data at their disposal, based on the experience they already have, would not be sufficient to enable them to present a reliable report on the economic and other aspects of the question unless they had, first of all, erected a number of experimental lines which would give them the data necessary to prepare such a report. Accordingly, they now propose to erect a number of experimental networks for certain areas which they have chosen as being most representative of the general conditions in the country. That suggestion of theirs has been approved of by me, and I presume that as soon as the necessary plans can be completed the erection of these networks will be undertaken. When they have been erected, and when they have been in operation for some time, then the Electricity Supply Board will be in a position to submit a comprehensive report upon the whole matter.
Question put and agreed to.
SECTION 3.
Question proposed: "That Section 3 stand part of the Bill."
I should like to go back for a few moments Sir, to the discussion we had on the Second Reading on the matter to which Section 3 has reference. Whether I failed to make myself clearly understood or not, I feel that the matter I raised was not answered to my satisfaction. Perhaps it is that I did not get my point fully across. In this section, power is being taken to generate electricity by peat. On the last occasion that I suggested the necessity for a proper and a complete survey of our peat resources, perhaps I should have added something to make clear what I really meant. We have in certain areas peat resources which we would probably not exhaust for the greater part of a century, but scattered here and there are fairly large tracts of bog which are being used and exploited at present. The Minister stated that some body had made a complete survey of our peat resources, and I gathered that it was the Peat Development Board. My view is that no survey of these resources can be regarded as being complete unless it is undertaken in conjunction with an examination of the necessities of the districts where these resources are. In a particular area of bog there is the possibility of procuring so many hundred tons of peat per annum for a certain number of years. My opinion — and I think it was inherent, so to speak, in the bog scheme of the Department a couple of years ago, which, I take it, has been terminated, for whatever cause is not quite clear — is that it was a great mistake, and an interference with economic life to a degree that might be very grave, to attempt to exploit peat resources in certain districts where they are essential to the life of the people in conjunction with their farms year after year as long as they last.
A policy that would tend to urge people to go into the bogs and to use these resources up in a short period, in order to provide peat in ample quantities for sale in towns and at a distance from their homes was, in my view, disastrous for these people. There is a policy in the Land Commission regarding the subdivision of holdings. Farmers under a certain valuation or with a certain area of land are not permitted to subdivide holdings, for the good and sufficient reason that it would not be possible for themselves and their families to exist in some areas without having a certain acreage. There are thousands of small farmers in the west, in Cavan and elsewhere, living convenient to bogs that are as essential to the life of these families as the acreage of their land. If you have a bog policy that is going to exploit in in a year or in ten years the peat resources of a district, it will result in the economic impoverishment of such districts, and make it almost impossible for the people to live on small holdings.
On the last occasion I raised this question I asked that we should have a proper peat survey made. In my opinion no survey of our peat resources would be adequate unless it took into consideration the necessity of holdings at present obtaining fuel from these bogs. I have no doubt whatever that the policy of the Department a couple of years ago, in urging people to produce turf and sell and export it to all parts, without considering fully the implications and consequences to these families perhaps ten years hence, was very unwise indeed. My view is that while going on with the plan to develop electricity from the bogs, where they extend to hundreds of acres, it should not be forgotten that there are other bogs elsewhere convenient to which hundreds of families are living and that they obtain a good deal of their subsistence from that fuel which is next in importance to food.
It seems to me that a bog policy in these areas is as essential as a land policy. A bog policy that is going to exploit our turbary resources or to export turf out of a district and turn it into cash, in a few years would be just as disastrous for the people there as if the surface of their holdings was dug up and burned to provide manure. I do not know the view of the Minister or the Department, or if it is an aspect of the problem that has been considered. If it was not given consideration up to the present, I suggest it is of vital importance to the economic life of thousands of small farmers. While they might benefit in the immediate future from a policy whereby they could utilise turbary resources close to their holdings, by making turf and sending it away from their districts, I have known it happen that such people had to travel miles to bogs to provide firing for their homesteads at much more expense. Another day will come when turbary will not be available in these districts at all because of this exploitation. That is something we should provide against.
Senator Baxter's speech in view of the speeches we had from him and others on a previous occasion is definitely very interesting. He seems to be quite alarmed at the prospect of peat development. I can assure the Senator that he might very wisely have made himself conversant with the actual facts since the previous debate. One of his numerous worries concerns a survey of our peat resources. He was assured previously by the Minister and by others that a very exhaustive survey had been made. His worry is that the survey may possibly have been made by the engineering staff of the Turf Development Board. I can assure him that such a survey was made by the present excellent staff of the Turf Development Board. But if he still has worries I can assure him that numerous other surveys were made on the question of turf development and that they did not come up for discussion for the first time a couple of years ago. This project has been going on here for years, for 50 or 60 years. The manufacture of turf and machine-won turf was going on for the last 24 years under the late Sir John Purser Griffith at Turraun. I do not propose to follow Senator Baxter over the rather wide ground that he travelled in his speech but, in connection with the scare that he would like to create, on the necessity for provision for turbary rights for farmers, while I may be wrong, I know that I have had quite a lot of communication with the Land Commission, and my experience is that where turbary is available it has been the policy of the Land Commission if it is not a definite regulation, to provide turbary whenever it is available where the people have a tradition of turbary.
I am well aware of the fact that when the question of developing certain bogs came up the Land Commission was consulted not only about producing turf, but on the possible needs not only of the present-day farmers, but of future generations, so that the Senator can make his mind easy on that score. In connection with this same score, apparently Senator Baxter has in mind the possible danger of the development of Clonsast bog, possibly the danger that this thing may be a success, and that a power-station might be set up in Clonsast. He has visions of this whole district being left without a sod of turf in the very near future. I should like to ask Senator Baxter, assuming that he has gone to Clonsast since the last discussion——
He has not.
That is worse. He must have met somebody who saw the bog.
I spoke to no one about it.
If he had seen the bog or met somebody who visited it he would know that where the machines are now working at Clonsast has never before been set foot on by anybody as far as we know. It is common knowledge that people went to Mass in a boat across the place that is now being used for the production of peat. So far as the existing supply of turf in Clonsast is concerned, a person need only look at a map to see that there are miles and miles of bog along that part of the country, that it is a succession of bogs, and that in our wildest dreams we could not hope to exhaust the supply of turf in that place about which Senator Baxter is worrying.
With all respect, I think it is hardly right that this debate on the question of setting up a power plant to develop electricity from peat should be allowed to develop into a discussion, or an attack if you like, on the Turf Development Board. In any case, Sir, I accept your ruling. The only thing I should like to point out to Senator Baxter is that he may make his mind easy on the matter. So may Senator Hayes, who did not think it worth while to go there and who got up the last day to tell us about something he did not know anything about. He told us that we were getting mixed up between brown coal and turf. Anybody who knows anything about it would know that they are completely different things, that you might as well compare anthracite coal with turf.
I was merely smiling at the Senator accepting in advance a ruling which you, Sir, had not given. Am I right in saying that the Minister said on the last occasion, or that I read in the Dáil Debates, that the development of Clonsast would conclude at the end of 25 or 30 years?
So far as I am aware, the Minister said the life of the bog, which we were then discussing, was possibly 25 years. What I said was that nobody could hope to see the end of the turf resources of that particular part of the country, because Clonsast bog is only a portion of a large bog area in the immediate vicinity.
Senator Hayes once suggested that in order to make Senator Quirke understand something he would have to talk in Irish. I do not know what we are going to do to make Senator Quirke understand. I was not speaking of Clonsast at all.
That is worse still.
It may be, in Senator Quirke's estimation. There are other places than Clonsast. I suggest that the Minister has a responsibility for answering in this matter and not Senator Quirke, and I am certain that the Minister, if he attempts to answer, will be somewhat clearer than Senator Quirke has been, because the Senator tried to put a construction on my remarks which is the opposite of what I said. It is not my fault if perverseness drives him to do that sort of thing. We cannot change human nature at this time of day. I am not concerned about the people living on the borders of Clonsast. I do not know whether there are any people living near the bog at all. I will go there some day, when the smoke-screen that Senator Quirke and people like him put up is cleared away, to see what Clonsast is like and what they have accomplished there. Perhaps I shall wait until we get light from it. Senator Quirke cannot answer what I am speaking about. I am certain that he does not know one-tenth of what I know about these bogs. He certainly does not know one-tenth of what I know about the people who live on small farms on the edge of the bogs.
If there is a policy, I want to know whether it is the same policy the Department had a few years ago with regard to the small farmers who have turbary rights. Even under Fianna Fáil, you cannot cut turf on somebody else's bog. These farmers have turbary rights. They did not get them as a result of Senator Quirke's intervention with the Land Commission; they had them before his time. What I am concerned to know is what policy the Department have with regard to the exploitation of the bogs. I am quite certain that there are some people on the right-hand side of the House who know this probably better than Senator Quirke. I believe that it is a very bad policy to urge a man, who has five or ten acres of poorish land and two or three acres of turbary, to exploit these two or three acres and to send the turf away from that district ten, 20, 30, 40, or 100 miles to Dublin.
I am afraid the Senator is out of order. We are not discussing the policy of the Turf Development Board, but a Bill dealing with the supply of electricity. I do not see where the operations of the board as such come into it.
At the moment we are discussing Section 3 of the Bill.
I take it that Section 3 enunciates a policy in relation to the bogs of the country.
The Senator ought to read the section which is only for the purpose of removing doubts.
I have read it. If the Cathaoirleach rules that I am not entitled to raise this, I am satisfied.
The Senator may proceed.
I should like to get an answer from the Minister. I think it is a very important and vital matter. I urge, whether he is prepared to answer now or not, that a policy in regard to the bogs, either for the development of electricity from peat, or for the cutting, drying and selling of turf, that is going to make a great many of our small farms more uneconomical than they are is an unsound policy and that, in so far as the Minister's Department has responsibility for enunciating a policy, they should study carefully the consequences before a scheme of exploitation is carried out that may be just as bad as grain-growing by farmers in America which is leaving nothing but deserts.
I think that Senator Baxter has not read the section which we are now discussing as carefully perhaps as he might have. Sub-section (1) of Section 3 reads: —
For the purpose of removing doubts it is hereby declared that the powers and functions given to the board by sub-section (3) of Section 20 of the Principal Act include the construction, maintenance, and operation of electric generating stations designed for using peat as fuel either alone or together with other kinds of fuel and every reference to the powers and functions of the board contained in the Electricity (Supply) Acts, 1927 to 1935, shall be construed and have effect accordingly.
With all due respect to the Senator, it seems to me that no matter how germane it may be to discuss on that section the policy of the Electricity Supply Board in regard to the utilisation of peat fuel when I am asked, on a Bill relating to electricity supply, to engage in a general discussion about the policy of the Turf Development Board in relation to what it is going to do to a poor man's bog here or to a poor man's bog there, and how it is going to develop a large or small or medium deposit of peat, I think, if I might say so, with all courtesy to you, Sir, and to the House, it is unreasonable to expect a Minister who has come here to discuss the question of electricity to turn round and discuss another question, which may be remotely associated with it, namely, the whole question of the development of the peat resources of the country.
If I may say so also, I think there is underlying the Senator's speech in this matter — I do not say it is his purpose or intention — the danger that he may be clouding and prejudicing the whole of this issue by inducing a person, not so well informed as the Senator, to apprehend that his two acres of turbary are going to be gobbled up by this huge mammoth, the Electricity Supply Board, in order that the concern in question may be able to generate electricity from turf for townspeople. That, I think, is the danger which is inherent in the sort of speech we have listened to. As Senator Quirke has said, the generating station which it is proposed to erect is to be situated in Portarlington, and it is proposed, for the purpose of supplying that station with fuel, from a bog over 4,000 acres in extent, to develop one comparatively small area in the large tract of bog land that constitutes the central portion of our country. Clonsast is a bog which could not be developed by hand or by manual labour for the ordinary purposes of turbary, and, accordingly, I think, in that connection, to drag this question of the small holder of ten acres, with his two acres of turbary, into the discussion is only to confuse the issue. The position of the Turf Board in this matter is one that I am not, with every respect to the Chair and the House, in a position to discuss on this Bill.
May I just make this point? I raised the question of a peat survey on the last day and got an answer that I thought was not complete. My purpose in raising it again to-day was this: that in my judgment such a survey had to take certain things into account. That was all I said to-day. To suggest that anything I did say was said with a desire to prejudice, or make difficulties of any kind for, the scheme contained in this Bill would be a perversion of the truth, and of my desires and intentions, because I have nothing but the best of goodwill for the scheme.
Question put and agreed to.
Sections 4 and 5 agreed to.
With regard to the amendment on the Order Paper in the name of Senator Counihan, to insert a new section before Section 6, as the terms of the amendment are outside the scope of the Bill, I am ruling the amendment out of order.
Section 6 agreed to.
Title agreed to.
Bill reported without amendment.
Agreed to take the remaining stages of the Bill now.
Question: —"That the Bill be received for final consideration"— put and agreed to.
Question:—"That the Bill do now pass"—put and agreed to.