I move:
That the Seanad is of opinion that in order to maintain our cattle population, it is essential to restrict the present slaughter of calves and requests the Minister for Agriculture to devise a scheme by which the increased price to be paid by creameries for milk be paid only to suppliers who rear a certain percentage of calves.
It is with a certain amount of reluctance that I propose this motion, because I am very definitely opposed to Government interference in any business, and particularly Government interference with the farmers and telling them how to carry on their work; but calves have been slaughtered to such a very great extent that the cattle trade have become alarmed. They feel that, if some restriction is not put on the slaughtering of these calves, the country in a few years will be denuded of cattle. In the fortnight from April 4th to April 18th, 5,400 carcases of calves were exported by the L.M.S. to England. I have no record of the number exported since, but I understand that slaughtering is still going on. Senator Corkery, I am sure, can tell the House that, in his part of the country, there has been no slackening off, and that they are slaughtering all the calves they can get. I have been told that a particular firm in his district, up to now, have been slaughtering 1,000 calves per week, and, in addition, in every part of the South, hundreds of calves are slaughtered every week and fed to greyhounds. That is a fact and anybody who has any knowledge of the South must admit that it is so.
Unfortunately, the biggest number of calves sold for slaughter come from those districts where they have the best land and the good cows. In the poorer districts, very few calves are ever slaughtered, and I am sure that the Minister and Senator McCabe can tell us that, in County Cavan, they very rarely slaughter a calf. I have been told that, in Cavan and other Border counties, calves are being smuggled across the Border from the Six Counties for rearing, so the fact is that calves are not being reared in the Six Counties, are not being reared in England and are not being reared in Éire. The position appears to be getting very serious. There are many other farmers outside the Minister's county who rear calves, but they are not rearing the same number as they used to rear, and if the calves are all slaughtered in the producing districts they will not be able to get the calves to rear. The motion does not propose that there should be any compulsion on farmers to rear calves. What it suggests is that, where a farmer sells his calf for slaughter for a few shillings and sells the separated milk for manufacturing purposes for a few pence, there should be some restriction.
Farmers outside the creamery districts are the biggest section and consequently they pay a very large proportion of the £2,500,000 of bounty which the Minister says is now being paid to farmers who supply milk to creameries. We who are outside the creamery districts and who are not getting one penny of that sum of £2,500,000 while paying the biggest proportion of it, have a right to have a small say in what these farmers should do. I do not say that these farmers are getting a great price for their milk, or getting anything more than they are entitled to, but if the slaughter of calves is not in some way restricted, it will mean disaster for the country.
The cattle trade believe it would be a wise policy to subsidise the rearing of calves and they recommend that every calf reared by any farmer in Éire, and in good condition at nine months old, should get a bounty of 30/-. They recommend that that bounty should be given in the shape of a voucher to be exchanged for artificial manure and accepted only in payment for artificial manure, the same as the half-crown bounty which farmers get from the millers in respect of every barrel of wheat they supply to them. I have been told that to administer such a scheme would be very expensive, but I do not think it would be. It could be administered in the same way as the scheme of relief of rates in respect of agricultural employment.
In that scheme, every one of the 350,000 farmers in this country got at the beginning of every year a form on which he was asked to state the number of agricultural workers employed by him for the whole year, including members of his family or relations under 17 years of age. He fills up that form and sends it to the county council, then it goes to the Gardaí and there is a check upon it. I have hardly heard of a single prosecution of any farmer for making a false declaration of the number he had employed. If the Minister would adopt the proposal, the question of expense of administration need not trouble him, as it could be done in the same way and with just as little expense.
Every economist preaches that, if we want to improve our standard of living, we must increase our production per man, per cow and per acre and make exports balance imports. Our production per man is fairly satisfactory, but our production per cow and per acre could be very much improved. The greatest help would be a liberal supply of artificial manure. It would improve our tillage land and our grass land, and as grass is the cheapest and most nutritious of all foods the giving of a subsidy for the rearing of calves would pay for itself and produce very good dividends for the country. It would increase the number of calves and increase the food available to rear them and keep them in good condition.
I know that a proposal to produce more cattle for export to feed John Bull was never very popular with a certain section. It was unpopular with the Government when they were advocating the slaughter of calves and preaching the policy of self-sufficiency. The Minister for Industry and Commerce has exploded that policy in a recent speech.