I had hoped that this Bill would have been recommended by the Minister for Industry and Commerce who is an old friend as well as an old opponent of mine. I have pleasant recollections of numerous debates in which we both took part on former occasions, and I had looked on this occasion as a means of making a kind of range-finding speech to find out whether during the three years he and I were, so to speak, in the political wilderness he had added to his stock of political wisdom and I, perhaps, had added a little to mine, and whether we had come nearer together or had, perhaps, drifted apart.
In connection with a Bill like this it would be desirable to have some explanation of the general economic policy which the Government is pursuing in introducing measures of this kind. It is not the only one we have had over many years and it is typical of many we have had. The Parliamentary Secretary is not responsible for having introduced this particular tax. I think it was introduced by the previous Government in the month of April but the present Government cannot escape responsibility for confirming that duty now, and if I have any criticism to make of the economic policy underlying this and similar measures, that criticism is directed just as much against the present Government as against the former Government or vice versa.
I have great admiration for the Minister for Industry and Commerce which I am sure the Parliamentary Secretary will share, but if he has a fault at all it is a fault he shares with the poets and, in particular, with the great lyric poet, Pindar, who on one occasion was advised by a lady friend to sow with the hand and not with the whole sack. In his diligence at sowing new industries throughout the country the Minister has been inclined to be rather diffuse and indiscriminate and I should like to repeat Corinna's advice to Pindar in reference to the Minister. I suggest that discrimination should be exercised in the choice of new industries, and in particular, every effort should be made to see that they fit in with the general national economy, and will add to the real income of the nation as a whole.
Pursuing the same analogy, I might compare, not perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary, but the Minister with the Sower in the Parable. I have often wondered why the sower in that famous parable in the New Testament allowed so much seed to fall anywhere on the roadside or in the ditches or hedges instead of on the good well-tilled-ground. I think that, if careful examination is made, it will probably be discovered that the sower was using a sack which was moth-eaten or full of mouseholes and I sometimes suspect that the sack in which the Minister carries his industrial seeds contains a number of mouseholes or is moth-eaten, with the result that he sometimes drops industries inadvertently without due regard for the general circumstances of the case.
However, I am only too glad to recognise that some seeds fell on good ground and that in the course of the past ten or 20 years we have had established a few industries which were well worth while and which are a source of real strength to our economy; but on the other hand there are one or two instances in which we have encouraged the development of certain industries, which no doubt added to our industrial output but diminished our agricultural output by as much as, and perhaps by a greater amount, than they added to our industrial output. I should like to give an example of that kind of thing, because it has come under my own notice that there is in a town in the Midlands a factory producing wallboard which uses, as its raw material, straw, and one result of that factory's operations has been to bribe the farmers in all that neighbourhood to sell their straw for money to that factory, instead of having it tramped into manure and returned to the ground to fertilise it for future crops. In other words, the farmers have been bribed, as a result of that industry, to sell and to undermine the permanent fertility of their soil. That, as any agriculturalist will tell you, is a thoroughly objectionable thing and a policy which we should by no means favour.
There are other aspects of the matter. On the whole, we have been too much inclined to establish new industries in the east central region of the country, which is a region of great potential agricultural improvement but rather short of manpower. There is a real shortage of agricultural manpower in some of the best farming areas in the east central counties largely as a result of the competition for labour resulting from these new industries now established in so many of our provincial towns. In fact, I know cases in which farmers' sons, who should be working on the family farms which are half neglected, are instead cycling seven, eight and ten miles to work in factories in the neighbouring town, and a farmer here and there might be found who neglects his own farm, who lets it on the 11-months system and makes a living working in one of these new factories.
Any industrial policy which has the incidental result of bringing about the neglect of agriculture is taking away as much from the national income with the one hand as it adds to it with the other, and we should use a wiser discrimination with regard to that kind of development. On the other hand, take, for example, the case of beet. There was a time when I was highly critical of the whole beet policy pursued by this and the former Government, but on the whole, I think that world economic circumstances have changed, and have justified in the event the policy which was pursued in establishing beet growing here and aiming at producing most of our sugar supplies from our own resources; but, in this very area I have in mind, where there are numerous factories in the local country towns, the beet-growing efforts of the farmers are restricted and inhibited because they cannot count on the necessary labour to harvest additional areas of beet and the reason they cannot get that labour is that people are cycling seven, eight and ten miles to a neighbouring town to work in factories instead of working on the land; so that, if you want more beet, you will have to go slow in the matter of establishing new industries in these east central urban centres.
In fact, I would say: "Pipe down on industrial development so far as the fertile agricultural regions are concerned, which are short of man-power," but I would go on to add: "Pipe up on industrial development in the congested districts," where I would welcome the prospect of the Government seriously tackling the question of industrialisation, especially in the Gaeltacht areas. There is one qualification I have to make. Even in the rich agricultural areas which are short of man-power, I welcome the present tendency to develop new industries directly related to the processing of our own agricultural raw materials. In particular, I have in mind the present strongly-marked tendency towards meat processing factories to replace the former practice, which was almost universal, of exporting cattle on the hoof. That is one exception to the undesirability of establishing new industries in the rich east central agricultural regions.
I have the utmost sympathy with any policy which may be devised to give a thoroughly sound economic basis to the people of the Gaeltacht and the congested areas. There you have a situation in which agricultural resources are all too scant and man-power has hitherto been all too numerous. Now we are facing a situation in which the man-power will disappear unless we provide a means of making a tolerable living for the people of the Gaeltacht and diminish the necessity under which many find themselves of either migrating or emigrating. I do not think that the policy of industrialising the Gaeltacht is by any means a chimerical dream. It has been done, and done successfully, in one important part of the Gaeltacht, in Templecrone in South Donegal, where Paddy Gallagher has worked miracles in developing the whole industrial life of the neighbourhood.
If we could by some magic create numerous Paddy Gallaghers throughout the whole of the Gaeltacht, we could transform the whole of that part of the country within one generation. The Minister has elsewhere complained that, whereas industrial output has increased by a substantial percentage in the last ten or 20 years, agricultural output is barely back at pre-war level. I admit that fact and I also deplore it. I suggest that to some extent this indiscriminate policy, to which I have referred, is to blame for the fact that agricultural output has failed to expand, and that he has been taking away from agriculture with the one hand what he gave to industry with the other. In general, I would like to assure the House that I, too, am in favour of a wise policy of agricultural plus industrial development going hand in hand together, with the big brother, agriculture, leading the way, of course.
I apologise if I have said too much about agriculture. I spent my temporary exile from this House in writing a book about agriculture. I hope it will have the result of preventing me from making long speeches about it in the future, as I will be able to refer Senators to the appropriate chapter and page of that book instead. A copy of it will, no doubt, be found in the Library. I hope I have trodden on the coat of the Parliamentary Secretary or of certain other members of the House, who may be disposed to add their contribution to this debate, and so let us have a real debate about one of the most important aspects of our economic policy.
