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Normal View

Seanad Éireann debate -
Thursday, 16 Dec 1954

Vol. 44 No. 7

Wheat Prices—Motion (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:—
That, having regard to the severe losses that wheat growers have suffered in the present year and in view of the importance of wheat-growing to our nation's economy, Seanad Éireann deeply deplores the Government's decision to reduce the price of wheat and strongly recommends that the matter be reconsidered and that the price for the 1955 wheat crop be not less than that paid for the 1954 crop.—(Senator Patrick Cogan, Senator Seán Hartney, Senator Fred Hawkings).

Ba mhaith liom cabhrú leis an té a chuir an tairiscint seo os cóir an tSeanaid agus leis an té a chuidigh léi, ag iarraidh ar an Aire agus ar an Rialtas athbhreithniú a dhéanamh ar scéal seo praghas na cruithneachtan i gcóir an dá bhliain atá le teacht. Isé mo thuairim go ndéanfaidh an iarracht seo atá á dhéanamh ag an Rialtas, ar luach na cruithneachtan a laghdú, díobháil mhór do eacnamaíocht na tíre agus gur éagóir mhór é ar fheirmeoirí na tíre seo. Tá fhios againn go léir chómh deacair is a bhí sé ag na feirmeoirí na barraí a shábháil i mbliana. Bhí agus tá droch-bhail ar na feirmeoirí mar gheall ar an drochaimsir. Tháinig aimsear nach raibh a leithéid ann le céad bliain anuas.

Sí an chuspóir atá dá cur i bhfeidhm anseo le breis is fiche bliain anuas ná cuspóir Sinn Féin. Sin í an chuspóir í, mar b'shin í cuspóir Sinn Féin, go rabhamar go léir dílis di fadó, nuair a bhíomar ag iarraidh ar mhuintir na tíre a mbarraí féin a chur ag fás anseo, d'fhonn is go mbeadh ár ndóithin bídh anseo againn agus ár ndóithin de gach rud a b'fhéidir agus gan bheith ag braith ar na tíortha lasmuigh chun sinne a chothú anseo. B'shin í cuspóir Sinn Féin, agus b'shin í an chuspóir a chuir Fianna Fáil rómpu nuair a chuadar í réim i 1932.

Bheartaíodar, chuir siad de dhualgas orthu féin, leanúint de chuspóir Sinn Féin, sé sin le rá, go mbeadh ár seasamh ar ár n-iarrachtaí féin anseo. Ach, ar áimhridh an scéal, tá ceist seo na cruithneachtan fite fuaite le cursaí poilitíochta sa tír seo—agus i mo thuairimse, is mór an trua é sin. Is dóigh liom gurb é an fáth go bhfuil lucht an Rialtais seo, go mór mhór lucht Fine Gael——

Go bhfóiridh Dia orthu.

——i gcoinnibh na cruithneachtan d'fhás anseo go fóirleathan ná gurb é bun-phrionsabal Fhianna Fáil é a dhéanamh. Sin é an fáth gut dóigh liom gur mór an trua ná féadfaimis ceist seo na cruithneachtan a dheighilt ó chúrsaí poilitíochta ar fad, fé mar atá déanta againn le barra an bhiatais agus le siúcra anseo. Do cuireadh comhlucht fé leith ar bun anseo roinnt bhlianta ó shoin a raibh sé, agus a bhfuil sé fós, de chúram orthu dul i mbun barra an bhiatais agus tionscail an tsiúcra sa tír seo. Caithfidh gach éinne a adhmháil go bhfuil éirithe thar na beartaibh leo agus déarfainn nach n-éireoadh chomh maith sin leo muna mbeadh go bhfuil neamhspleáchas acu ar gach Rialtas a tháinig i réim anseo. Nuair atá riaradh an tionscail sin fé chomhlucht neamhspleách, déanann sé ná beadh athrú cuspóra ann ó Rialtas go céile. Tá fhios againn gurb olc an rud é athrú cuspóra ag teacht gach uair a bhíonn athrú Rialtais anseo. Is olc an rud é maidir le cruithneacht agus dob olc an rud é maidir le siúcra, go mba díreach fé stiúradh an Rialtais a bheadh an tionscal sin, mar, dá dtiocfadh athrú mar sin ins na rudaí sin gach uair a bheadh Rialtas nua ann, ní bheadh fhios ag na feirmeoirí cá mbeidís. Is olc an rud é sin, mar is ar na feirmeoirí atá ár seasamh go léir agus déarfainn de réir mar bheas rath ar na feirmeoirí a bheas rath ar mhuintir na tíre agus de réir mar bheas mí-rath nó droch-bhail ar na feirmeoirí gur mar sin a bheas an scéal ag gnáth-mhuintir na tíre.

Anois, bhí an tAire ag iarraidh a chur in a luí orainn go mbeadh breis is ár ndóithin cruithneachtan againn i mbliana muna mbeadh gur tháinig droc-shéasúir. Ní aontaím le sin in aon chor. Dhein sé tagairt do thrí chéad míle tonna cruithneachtan tirim, ach do réir an mhéid acraí a bhí curtha fén mbarra san ní dóigh liom go mbeadh ár ndóithin in naon chor againn de chruithneachtain sa tír seo, nuair a chuirfeá san áireamh an méid cailliúna a bheadh ann idir an gort agus an scioból agus idir an scioból agus an muileann, agus mar sin de, agus an méid cruithneachtan a caithfí a chur i dtaísce le haghaidh síl. Tá tagairt déanta díobh san cheana agus ní mian liom leanúint de.

Ná beadh sé lua go leor don Rialtas an laghdú a shocrú, an scéal a shocrú, nuair a thithfeadh an rud amach? Dá dtiteadh sé amach go mbeadh breis is ár ndóithin cruithneachtan againn le haghaidh an náisiúin seo chun muintir na tíre a chothú, nach mbeadh sin lua go léor chun an scéal seo—praghas na cruithneachtan a laghdú? Fé mar adúirt cainnteoirí eile, ní hí seo an bhliain chun an praghas-ghearradh san do dhéanamh, nuair tá droch-bhail ar na feirmeoirí ar fud na tíire, de dheascaibh na droch-aimsire. Fé mar atá ráite, leis, dá mbeadh sé ar aigne ag an Rialtas aon laghdú a dhéanamh ar an luach nó ar an bpraghas, is diaidh ar ndiaidh ba cheart é a dhéanamh, chun go raghadh na feirmeoirí i dtaithí an scéil. Tá sé ró-obann, tá sé ag teacht go ró-obann orthu. Ní rabhadar ullamh dó, do thangthas, mar a dearfá, aniar adtuaidh orthu, agus ní ceart é sin in aon chor. Is mar gheall ar na rudaí sin go léir a táimíd ag iarraidh ar an Rialtas téarmaí na tairiscinte seo a ghlacadh—i gcóir na bliana seo go háirithe, agus ansin beidh fios fán scéal ag na feirmeoirí i gcóir na mblianta eile. Tabharfaidh sé méar ar eolas dóibh ar an méid atá rompu san am le theacht. Anois, ós rud é go bhfuil an méid seo ráite agam as Gaeilge, bhféidir nárbh aon díobháil cúpla focal Béarla a rá anois.

I think, first of all, I would join with the proposer and seconder of this motion in asking the Minister and the Government to accept its terms in relation to the price that is to be paid to the farmers for home-grown wheat for the next two years. I think that this proposal on the part of the Minister for Agriculture and the Government to slash the price of home-grown wheat by 12/6 a barrel for the next two years is a retrograde step from the point of view of the national economy and it is a callous step from the point of view of the farmers.

Everybody knows that the year 1954 was the worst in living memory from the point of view of bad wheather and bad conditions generally for farmers trying to save their crops. Instead of getting any sympathy from the Minister or the Government, instead of any attempt being made to come to their rescue and to compensate them for the losses they have sustained, here we have an attempt to cut down the price of the most important crop that the farmer raises from the soil. Every type of farmer, big and small, suffered this year and this is the year the Government have chosen to impose this drastic cut on the price of home-grown wheat delivered at the mills.

The Minister, both here and in the Dáil, advanced two major reasons for proposing to reduce the price of home-grown wheat. One was that speculators had emerged and had reaped inordinate profits from the extensive growing of wheat by conacre and otherwise. The other reason he advanced is that he wants to induce the fermers to switch away from the growing of wheat to the growing of barley and oats. As regards the latter reason, let me say that we are all in agreement with the Minister that the acreage under barley, oats and potatoes should be increased because the amount of tillage generally is far below what it should be. It is far below the amount of tillage in other countries in Europe. I would say, before departing from that, that we could afford to double the amount of tillage we have. It would be all to the good from the point of view of our national economy so that if there is a genuine attempt being made to increase the acreage under barley, oats and other crops such as potatoes, let that not be made at the expense of wheat, because, as has been shown, they can be all complementary to one another.

There is one thing that strikes me about the Minister's proposal to increase the acreage under barley and oats and it is this. The only way he can do that is by price inducement. In other words, he would have to make the price so attractive for the farmers that they will, in fact, go in for the more intensive production of barley and oats. If there is such an attractive price, what is to prevent the speculators from coming along again and reaping huge profits from the cultivation of barley and oats? Will the Minister have any remedy for that? Maybe he will come along later and tell us that he will have a remedy to deal with these gentlemen, but if he has that remedy in relation to the growing of barley, why not use that remedy in relation to wheat?

I am one who believes that it is not right to penalise the ordinary honest-to-God working farmers because of these few speculators mentioned by the Minister for Agriculture. There should be a remedy for them. If they come in now and take advantage of the guaranteed price for barley, what is to be done about it? Apparently nothing because the Minister has said nothing about it. It appears that the deep-rooted prejudice is there in regard to wheat and it has always been there, I am sorry to say, by certain politicians, and the question is will they ever get over that mountain of prejudice they have tried to create against the growing of wheat?

Before the adjournment last night, I listened to a few speeches and took a very keen interest in them. I was especially interested in the speech made by Senator O'Brien. A speech from Senator O'Brien is always very interesting to listen to. In the course of his speech he advocated a reversal of policy as regards subsidies. He said he did not believe in subsidies in relation to cereal crops. I do not know if many people in the country hold that view at the present time. I think Senator O'Brien's view of could be described as the view of a doctrinaire economist but I am afraid that in present world conditions this policy of the doctrinaire economist cannot be applied. It would not be practicable I because we find that even in the great United States of America wheat and other crops are subsidised.

Wheat is being subsidised in the U.S.A. to the tune of £5 a ton. If it is considered necessary to have recourse to that policy in that country, with its great potential wealth, surely it is necessary for us in this country, and to have recourse to a policy of subsidies in relation to other things as well. However, as Senator Sheehy Skeffington pointed out last night, we have a policy of tariffs in this country. Tariffs are clapped on the goods being imported and there is not a word at all about them—tariffs sometimes to the amount of 75 per cent. Bear in mind that there is a great similarity between subsidies and tariffs. The both belong to the same principle—the principle of protection. Subsidies mean protection for the farmers' industry and tariffs mean protection for our secondary industries. Will anybody tell me that, if we dropped the subsidisation policy in regard to the things we produce on the land, such as wheat, and if we dropped the tariffs policy, the business of this country could be kept going and employment could be kept up, even to its present level? It certainly could not.

It seems to me that Senator O'Brien's proposal is more or less in keeping with the teaching of the Manchester School of economics, which was all right in the 19th century but which, I am afraid, would not work in this 20th century.

Reference has been made in the course of this debate to the cost of living and, no doubt, this question of price fixation, for wheat is not unrelated to the cost of living because wheat is one of the items involved in the cost of living. The all-important question is: is this reduction that is about to be made in the cost of home-grown wheat to be passed on to the consumers of this country by way of cheaper flour and cheaper bread? After all, it would be only natural to expect that. If the farmers knew that this reduction would be passed on to the consumers, in the shape of cheaper bread and cheaper flour, it would be some consolation, however small, to them. But such is not the case. Not one penny of this money is to be devoted to a reduction in the cost of living—and that is the extraordinary feature of this whole proposition.

As I said, it is natural to expect, generally speaking, that when the cost of any raw material is brought down, the reduction would be reflected in the price of the finished article. In this case, the raw material is wheat and the finished article is bread. Why, then, is there not a demand on the part of those politicians who say they have the interests of the poor people at heart that this couple of million £s that are to be taken away from the farmers be passed on to the consumers of bread in this country? I think that is a pertinent and a fair question to ask.

I remember that, a short time before the last general election, we had a debate on the cost of living. It was not a debate on any specific motion in regard to the cost of living, but it arose out of that annual Bill called the Supplies and Services Bill.

Is the Senator not getting away now from the price of wheat?

The cost of living is very closely related to the price of wheat.

Senator Kissane.

The whole of that debate resolved itself into a discussion on the cost of living. I pointed out, on that occasion, that there were two factors to be taken into account in connection with the cost of living and that the first factor was the goods that are imported. I said there was nothing much the Government could do about those imported goods. They could not regulate the prices of them because the producers and the trade organisations in those foreign countries were not prepared to put goods on this market at a price which they considered to be below the economic level. The second factor is the goods and services provided here at home—and foremost amongst these would be the items that are produced from the land. There was something the Government could do about them because the Government of the day has a degree of control over the farmers in that they can fix the prices. The temptation would be there for any Government, when pressure would be brought to bear on them to reduce the cost of living, to go to the people over whom they have control and cut their prices, and here we have it being done to-day in regard to wheat. But, if we have, it is not being done for the purpose of bringing down the cost of living: not a bit of it.

We have got no cheap wheat yet.

That is my point. If the wheat is to be cheaper, why are we not going to have a cheaper loft?

Wait and see.

Why will those politicians, who tell us they have the interests of the consumers at heart, not come along now and explain why they are not demanding that this cut in the price of wheat be passed on to the consumers and the poor people of this country?

Live horse and you will get grass.

Everybody knows that the cost of living in this country has now reached an all-time high level. That has happened since the present Government came into office.

What about your 1951 programme?

If there is to be a reduction in the price of wheat, here is an opportunity of doing something about it. There was a debate in the other House on this matter. We are debating the same subject in this Chamber to-day and it is about time that some one of us asked the Government why they are not doing this. We know that they intend to utilise the money they are to save for the Exchequer for extraneous purposes, including the making of retrospective payments to our civil servants. That is one: I suppose there are others to come.

I am afraid that this move by the Government to cut down the price of the principal cash crop of the farmers will have the effect of breaking the farmers' courage.

When their courage was not broken in years past, it will not be broken now.

We had to face a mountain of prejudice in connection with this wheat crop.

And the Broy harriers.

It was pointed out to the farmers by certain politicians that the land of this country was not suitable for the growing of wheat and that he would be a madman who would attempt to grow wheat in such land. It was also pointed out to the farmers that climatic conditions here were such as to make the growing and saving of wheat in this country impossible.

They were not very favourable this year.

But the wheat crop is the one crop that stood up to the bad weather conditions this year. Everybody knows that. In other words, a lesson has been learned this year from the bad weather conditions and that lesson is that the one crop that can stand up to adverse weather conditions is wheat.

I suppose the Government arranged for the bad weather, too.

As a matter of fact, if it were a Fianna Fáil Government were in office, that Government would be blamed for the bad weather, as they were blamed at one time. We remember that.

There was any amount of false propaganda being spread about this question of wheat. It would remove the fertility of the soil as well, we were told, but the fact emerges now that wheat is a very important ingredient in the rotation of crops. Everybody knows that now. As I said in my opening remarks in Irish, it is a great pity that this wheat growing is being made the subject of political controversy.

We did not put down the motion. It is you who are making it the subject of controversy.

It has been over the past 22 years, since 1932, since the very time when the amount of wheat grown in this country would only supply the nation with bread for three weeks. That was the position that obtained then and it took a good deal of endeavour and persuasion to get the people of the country to realise that it was in the nation's interest to get away from that position.

And you killed the cattle.

Away from it they have got, but, as I said, there is an attempt being made now to reverse the position, to put back the hands of the clock in relation to this matter. As I have said, it is a pity that this whole question cannot be divorced from politics, as, say, the growing of beet in this country is. Beet growing and the sugar industry are under autonomous control, under the management of a chairman and Comhlucht Siúicre Eireann.

On a point of order. The Senator has already made that statement when speaking in Irish.

I am aware of the fact.

And he is repeating himself.

I am not. I have barely referred to it, but I am developing it now by way of conclusion and I will not keep the House long, I assure you. The beet and sugar industry has been an unqualified success, because of the fact that there can be no political interference with it and if the same thing could obtain as regards the wheat industry and the flour milling industry, we would know exactly where we were——

Why was it not done?

——and there would be a better chance of advancement in connection with this matter.

Reference has been made here to the present Taoiseach's broadcast before the election, and of course those who sit behind him now try to persuade us that he made no reference at all to price. Whether he did or not, he made a reference to a guaranteed market for wheat.

And the farmer is going to get it.

He made a reference to a guaranteed market for five years and surely any leading politician whose ambition it was to become Taoiseach of this country must have had regard also to the price that was to be paid for this crop, because talking about a guaranteed market over any period, whether two, three or five years, must be meaningless without having the question of price in mind at the same time. The farmers of the country took it—and it is hard to blame them—that the price in operation at that time was the price that was going to be continued. You could not blame them for coming to that conclusion. This policy of cutting down the price of wheat must have been in contemplation before the change of Government at all, and, if it was, it was before the general election that that should have been made known.

We were not in government then.

You were looking for the people's support to put you into office and you cannot escape the responsibility by saying that. It was before the election that this announcement should have been made, if these politicians took the people of the country into their confidence; but they did not do so, because they knew that, if they did, that if they made any such announcement as this, they would not have the slightest hope of being returned to office and would not be sitting where they are now.

I ask the Seanad to accept this motion. Maybe the acceptance of this motion by the Seanad would have the effect of inducing the Government to change its mind in relation to this matter, although one would have expected that the wave of indignation that has arisen among the farmer? would have been sufficient to do that. We are, however, making this last minute appeal to the Government to reconsider the position and if they think it is necessary to effect a reduction in the price of wheat over the coming years, let them at least do it gradually. Surely a cut of 12/6 in the barrel is too much to impose on the farmers at one blow. If it were 2/6 a barrel, or even 5/-, it would not be so bad, but 12/6, in my judgment, is entirely excessive. As I said, maybe it is not too much to hope that the question will be reconsidered before it is carried into operation.

It is difficult to deal with a motion of this sort, particularly in view of the manner in which the motion has been approached by the movers and those who spoke in favour of it. I believe that it is the responsibility of any Government, when they tax the community, to see that the produce of that tax is reasonably and fairly distributed amongst those who ought in some way to benefit from it or whose endeavours would be encouraged by the disbursement of that money.

I believe that the amount of money which was given to those who grew wheat in this country during several years past imposed far too great a drain on our economy. I think that was grossly unfair to the ordinary taxpayer. I hope to show, briefly, that many people were allowed to make considerable sums of money from the policy which was pursued over several years. If the motion which we are discussing was carried in this House and accepted by the Government that practice would continue and a number of people would thus be enabled to get very rich. In addition, they would have to pay no tax on the proceeds of the wealth which they had accumulated in the process.

The present Government, in its wisdom, is taking the middle of the road course. The Minister for Agriculture himself has said that when he found that wheat growing in this country was an established practice, that those growing it were doing so on land that was suitable for it, that the land was being properly cultivated and that a good yield was being got, he would give them a reasonable and, if you like, a good profit on that form of endeavour, if they wanted to adopt that from of husbandry. I think that, so far, I have given a fair summary of some of the points that were made in the course of the debate.

It is said that there are 12,000,000 acres of arable land in the country. In my opinion, 350,000 acres are the maximum amount of land that we can use properly for the growing of wheat. If we grew more of it for the making of bread there would, I believe, be an outcry not only from the farmers but from every section of the community. People would complain that they could not eat the bread made from it because of the fact that the glutin content in our wheat is so weak. It would not, therefore, be suitable for the making of proper flour. I was told that myself by the director of a large flour milling concern in Dublin. He told me that several batches of bread had gone wrong because of the lack of glutin content in the wheat from which the flour was made. It was not possible to make bread from it which could be sold. If we had a surplus of such wheat it could not possible be exported from the country except at a considerable loss. Anyone with experience of agriculture knows that wheat can only be fed in very small quantities to animals. If one were to act otherwise, the feeding would have ill effects on the animals.

I know that in my part of the country this year people bought conacre at a very high price in the hope of making considerable profits from the growing of wheat. Many of them did make big profits. If the year had been favourable they would have made substantial profits, but part of their profits would be at the expense of the ordinary ratepayers and taxpayers. They went out this year and took conacre on a big scale.

It used to be the practice with small farmers to take conacre, maybe three, four or five acres from perhaps a neighbouring widow who was not able to till the land herself. He neighbour took the land from her as conacre and grew on it wheat maybe one year and beet another. The small farmers who took conacre in that way manured the land properly with artificial fertilisers. The land was kept in good heart by the application of humus and ordinary dung. But what happened this year? Those people to whom I have referred went in on the land, which they had taken in conacre, with their mechanised outfits. They did nothing to try and keep that land in good heart as the small farmers used to do. All they were concerned with was to make money. Instead, they availed of the opportunity which was presented to them by the policy of the last Government, and I suppose when that was the law of the land they were entitled to do it.

Reference has been made here to the fact that the Government were unwise in saying that they would give a guaranteed minimum price for barley and oats. In regard to the latter, the Government said that they would institute a scheme whereby the miller would contract with the farmer for oats. I presume that will be on a contract basis, and that the farmer will receive an agreed price. Therefore, I suppose that part of the question does not arise because he will be covered in any respect.

There is the minimum price of 40/-a barrel for barley which could be converted into pork costing not more than 8½d. per lb. live weight. I will tell the Seanad how I arrived at that calculation. I am assuming that the pigs in this country will be thrifty enough to produce 1 lb. of bacon for 4 lb. of barley meal. In some countries, under the best conditions, it has been shown that it can be done with 3 lb., but for the sake of argument I am taking it that 4 lb. of barley meal is the amount that would be necessary. The barley meal would cost about 2d. and the one-eighth of a ld. per lb. If you multiply that by four, the cost is 8½d. per lb. live weight. The present live weight price for pork pigs in this country is from 1/6 to 1/7 per lb. which is more than twice the conversion cost of the barley.

I contend that there is an almost unlimited export potential for the conversion of that barley into bacon at a very good price. That is guaranteed until the end of June, 1956, at whatever price will be negotiated from time to time by the British Farmers' Union with the British Ministry of Agriculture. They will continue to fight for the maintenance of a guaranteed price for the Irish farmer. I think what I have said ought to answer fully and adequately Senator Kissane's worry about what could be done with any surplus of barley we might have in the country. I suggest that there would be roughly 100 per cent. profit for anybody who wanted to feed it to animals for export.

I did not mention that. I mentioned speculators.

The Senator mentioned that there would be speculation in oats and barley. It is fair to ask, what is going to happen to the speculation in oats and barley? The oats will be contracted for and the barley can be fed to our live stock at a remunerative price for those who feed them. It would be a pity, I suggest, if anyone were to lead our farmers away from some branch of agricultural endeavour in which they could make plenty of money.

I am a member of the Fine Gael Party. I do not remember how long I have been growing wheat, but I have been growing it for years and years. I have been growing wheat, oats, barley, potatoes, turnips, mangolds and all the crops that are grown on a properly managed mixed farm in order to keep the land in good heart.

I do not like to see people running into this business who were never in it before and would like, if possible, if it were kept for the ordinary farmers of the country. We have seen a lot of crocodile tears shed about the shocking losses suffered this year. Some people did suffer losses, but, by and large, I believe that the Government are proposing to pay a very good and a very fair price for the wheat that is grown on properly managed land in this country.

I would hate to think that as a result of the debates that took place here and in the other House, the farmers were led astray and that some of them who could grow wheat properly on their land would be diverted from doing so by the action of certain people.

This year I grew 12 Irish acres of wheat. The seed for that cost me £90; 36 cwt. of fertilisers cost me £34; the cost of tilling and sowing was £96; the cost of spraying was £24; the cost of cutting was £60; the rates and annuities came to £24; and, mark this, the interest on capital came to £24. That gave me a total of about £360. I got almost £600 for that crop. I averaged 75/9 a barrel for the wheat and it gave me a return of nearly £250 on a turnover of £600. I reckon that if this had been a normal year, not a bumper year, I would have got another £144 and if I had got 80/- a barrel, which I could expect to get in a normal year where the moisture content is not as high as this year, I would have made a sum of over £400 profit on 12 Irish acres of land. Then I hear people saying that you should give up growing wheat because the price was cut. I am not going to give up because the price is cut to 67/6 a barrel. With the exception of beet, which is limited by high labour content and by the fact that it must be harvested late in the autumn at a difficult time of the year, there is no acre of ground on a farm that is producing as good a return or that will produce as good a return this year or the year after as the acre under wheat.

Is that £30 profit per acre?

At next year's price, given a normal production, I should get a net profit of over £300 which would give a profit of maybe nearly 50 per cent. on the turnover. How could any Government stand over taxing me and you and everybody else in order to pay the prices that are suggested by Senator Cogan and those who supported that motion here yesterday?

The Government have a very heavy responsibility in that respect and I believe that in showing that they were going to pay a reasonable price which would give a very generous profit for the next two years they did the right thing by the people. I want to give an example. If a man grew 100 Irish acres of wheat, on the basis of my calculations at 80/- a barrel, after paying interest on the investment in 100 acres of land he should make a net profit of about £3,500—and he would pay no income-tax on that except under Schedule A and Schedule B. It it is impossible to ask a Government to stand over that sort of thing. I have been growing this crop for a long time. I think I started growing it very early in the war, when the Government said that wheat was needed by our people. I never went around prating about the growing of wheat or thought I was a better man than my neighbour and I had no ideological complex about the growing of wheat, barley, beet or anything else. I think that if the crop is suitable for the land and if there is a fair price for it and if it fits in with the rotation, it ought to be grown. Haloes ought not to be handed out to people because they grow it. The Government gives a good price for it, and I think we will be doing a good day's work for the farmers if we say to the people who have land suitable for growing it, that if they have the technique to grow it, they will make a fair profit for themselves and will not have to ask the State to give them the opportunity or to give speculators the opportunity of making enormous sums out of Irish agriculture, which they should not be entitled to make.

It seems to me that the reason for guaranteeing the price of wheat is to ensure that a certain quantity is grown. The problem is that one knows how much is required but not how much you have to pay for it. If the guaranteed price is too low you may not get enough and if it is too high you may get not only what you want but a surplus. If you get a surplus, what are you going to do with it? So far as I know, there is no storage in this country which would be sufficient to take more than the normal demand, the day-to-day demands. If you turn to foreigners, any surplus would have to be sold on a buyers' market in competition with North American and other wheats which, I believe, stand at a very much lower price than that guaranteed last year. It seems to me, therefore, that if you have too high a price you will have a larger surplus than you calculated and in that case, as part of the guaranteed price is subsidy, the taxpayer is being asked to bear a larger subsidy than is necessary to secure the desired result. As to what the guaranteed price should be I am not in a position to say, but it seems to me that if it pays an individual to take land and make £30 an acre net profit, he took that land in order to make a profit, he anticipated that the produce of the wheat produced on it would be sufficient to pay the rent, pay costs and yield a profit, and it seems then quite clear that the price guaranteed last year is too high.

Finally, I would like to refer to some remarks Senator Kissane made in connection with the U.S.A. In the U.S.A. it has been the policy for a good many years now to support agricultural prices. The effect of that policy is that the Commodity Credit Corporation— which is the body that operates under the Government—have had to hold very large quantities of agricultural produce, butter, eggs and wheat.

I understand that the position in regard to wheat at the end of 1953 was that the stock held was sufficient for the whole home demand and for normal export and in addition there was a surplus equivalent to the whole of a normal export for one year. In Canada also there is a surplus. What is our position to be if we have to sell a certain quantity of our wheat here? It seems to me that it does not bode well for the prospects of selling any surplus that may arise here, with these very large stocks on the market, and for those reasons I will oppose this motion.

I wish first to express my sympathy with the movers of the motion and to express my approval of the terms of the motion. I would differ very much with my very distinguished colleague, Senator Professor George O'Brien, in many of the comments he made here last evening. Senator O'Brien would not hold that against me. Doctors differ. Eminent scholars differ. Very eminent mathematicians and economists differ. The trouble is that economics is being bedevilled by people standing up and holding forth as if they were divinely inspired, that their views on economics are the last word and that nobody else may have any opinion and, indeed, that no other conclusion is possible except the one they have arrived at. Senator O'Brien need have no uneasiness that we on this side in whatever term is used—I think it was that of "armchair economists"—intend any disrespect towards him. I am sure that the mover of the motion who is the person, I think, who used the term had no intention whatever of reflecting on the reputation or upon the sincerity of Senator O'Brien. He is a great economist, but there are equally great economists. There are very eminent economists in this country who do not hold with Senator Dr. O'Brien in all his views. Senator O'Brien would not hold that against those who differ from him, and I would not hold against Senator O'Brien any matter on which he might differ from me.

We have got to take this whole matter into perspective. There is a tendency, as I tried to indicate, on the part of certain people to overestimate the importance of economics and the importance of the economists' conclusions but what I would like to impress on the House and on the public is this —that economics is just one of a wide group of subjects known as sociology. It is no more than that. If economics must be related to all these other subjects, any failure to take note of the conclusions of the other sciences on the part of economists must lead to chaos. Any failure on the part of the other sciences to take note of the conclusions of economics must equally lead to failure. We are all in this but we are in it, and should be in it, on a co-operative basis. We must be patient with each other in whatever conclusion we may put forward. Let me make this point.

The economist will point out the great advantages of free enterprise. He will point out the great advantages of private enterprise. He will take note of the loss to a country from emigration. He will sit down and try to find out the causes of emigration. His main function will be that of diagnosis. He will indicate that emigration is the result of lack of opportunity for profitable economic activity. He will point out that emigration is due to the fact that people are dissatisfied in a certain region with the standard of living that obtains there and that they will seek a higher standard of living outside their own areas. The economist may even indicate the advantages to society as a whole that will result from emigration. In fact. the economist may give his benediction to serious emigration movements.

The politician and the sociologist must take note of these things. They will inquire, apart from the reasons for it, what will be the results and, having come to a conclusion as to what the results are and what the results are likely to be, they will press for action. I think it would be very unreasonable on the part of an economist to denounce the sociologist or the politician. At the moment, we are concerned with the decisions of the political entity we call the Government— this Government or the last Government. It would be wrong of the economist to denounce these people because they, having considered these matters in the light of the particular science with which they are concerned and having come to certain conclusions in regard to them, have declared for certain action in regard to them. It would be unreasonable and unfair of the economist to denounce them for such action. That is the kind of thing that has caused economists and economics to be treated with the suspicion they have been treated with for so long and so often.

Our duty is to consider the views of the various sciences known as the sociological sciences and see what is the best, not in the interests of a group, but in the interests of the community as a whole. I think that is the way we will have to look at this question immediately before us—the question of the price of wheat. It has been contended that the policy of subsidising wheat is a wrong one. An economist holds it is wrong. Might I point this out to the House?

The Banking Commission was mentioned last night. Older members of the House will remember that on more than one occasion I paid tribute to the members of the Banking Commission, and I expressed my appreciation of the report of the Banking Commission. There was quite a number of conclusions come to in the Banking Commission's report that I would not accept and that I know thinking men, professional economists, would not accept and sociologists would not and could not accept. Is the economist who refuses to accept these conclusions to be denounced as a person incapable of thinking? The economist who refuses to accept these conclusions is not to be denounced as a person who is not capable of examining these problems and coming to a conclusion in their regard. Equally, the sociologist who declares he cannot accept the conclusions that such and such is a fact and we should do nothing about it is not to be denounced for refusing to accept that view.

Having finished with my diagnosis on the economic basis and having become an ordinary citizen, I think that the other people, if they think inaction or action of an economic nature is likely to be harmful to the interests they have at heart, would be wrong not to take action to right the problem as they see it and to go against the directives of the economists.

There was a denunciation, for instance, by eminent economists of protection. For a century Britain denounced protection, but when it suited Britain she adopted protection and is very strongly protectionist. A former Government here was denounced roundly day in day out because it favoured a protectionist policy. It was foretold by certain economists that the policy would involve the nation in disaster. We have the facts before our very eyes that that policy was a success. It may have cost us something. You do not gain experience for nothing. You do not, generally, achieve experience without some sacrifice. Some of our industries may not be as efficient as similar industries in other countries but many of them are, and more efficient than such industries in other countries. Therefore, I want to ask the House to be careful when certain people stand up and dogmatise on these matters. Again, just as this policy of wheat subsidisation has been denounced, economists have denounced the whole idea of, for instance, State companies.

Would the Senator now come to the motion?

I submit that I am dealing with the motion. I am dealing with the matters that have been raised, and I think properly raised, by certain speakers. However, if the Chair thinks I should not pursue this matter and answer these comments, I will desist.

I do not think State companies come within the scope of this motion.

They do not— and I do not intend to deal with them now except to refer to them in passing. I just want to point out that the policy of wheat subsidies has been denounced as one that would lead to ruin. Time has proved that policy to be a success. It was said, also, that State companies could not be a success. Time has demonstrated that, with goodwill and favourable opportunities, they can be a success, notwithstanding the prognostications of certain economists.

Hear, Hear! Of course they can.

The question was asked last night, and I think properly so: Is there something special about wheat as compared with anything else? I think there is. Wheat, more than anything else, is of importance. It may not be of outstanding importance to me, but I know it is of outstanding importance to the masses of the people of the country. It is for that very reason that we subsidised bread after the last war—because of the importance of wheat in the life of the ordinary people. It is of very special importance. It is because of its very special importance that I am in favour of this motion. It is essential as a foodstuff. You may ask: Can we not get that foodstuff from somewhere else? If I felt we were back in normal peacetime, perhaps I should not feel as strongly about the matter as I feel at the moment. I think that, last night, Senator O'Brien over-emphasised the fact, as it seems to him that we are living in a peace era. I wonder if we are. This, of course, will not be a matter of fact. This is a matter of opinion—as, indeed, most of the points that have been raised here are matters of opinion, and we may differ in regard to these opinions.

There is a cold war. Indeed, I wonder whether one of the misfortunes of the world to-day is the fact that we have peace—because, under the cover of peace, the enemies of our civilisation are working and succeeding to a very great extent. It is an awful confession to have to make. It is not a conviction but it is a feeling I have that perhaps the worst thing that surrounds us to-day is the peace, such as it is, that we have. I am conscious of the fact that the failure to adjust this problem of the Austrian Treaty has, in itself, the makings of a war. I am conscious of the fact that the partition of Germany has the makings of a great world upheaval. I am conscious of the fact that there is a sharp difference developing every day between the United States and China.

Like the rest of the House, I see the enormous expenditure on armaments and on the engines of war. I see the anxiety of nations to hold in readiness effective and efficient armies. We might run into a war. It is because of that that I should be very sorry to see any action taken which might cause any decline in our wheat acreage. I should be sorry to see any action taken that would tend to break the tradition we have been developing in regard to the growing of wheat and its establishment as a normal industry in this country. For that reason—for the reason of national security—I feel it is inadvisable to tamper in the way that has been done with this question of the price of wheat. Because of that, particularly—as one of the Senators mentioned last night—I feel the whole thing is ill-timed. It is ill-timed and, furthermore, I think that, even if a case could be made that it is not ill-timed, the amount of the cut is far and away too severe.

When we are reckoning the cost of the subsidy, there are other factors that will have to be taken into account. I do not intend to discuss them now; they have been referred to already. The importance of wheat in the building-up of the fertility of the soil and increasing the all-over output of the soil must be taken into account. The very grasslands depend, to a considerable extent, on tillage for their improvement. As Senator Kissane has pointed out, wheat has been discovered to be one of the crops that enriches, when it is properly tended, rather than impoverishes the land so that, in the course of rotation, it gives us excellent yields of grass. The policy of wheat subsidisation in the past few years has been of tremendous importance to us in adjusting our external balance of payments.

Is there a member of this House who did not feel grave uneasiness during those years when our balance of payments got so seriously out of hand? The job was to overtake the deficiency. It was far better, and the course of events proved it to be so, that we should use Irish pounds, or sterling, to get our wheat than to try to buy our wheat from the dollar area. In any case, it is a fact that the overtaking of the international balance of payments was one of urgency—and wheat—growing and wheat subsidisation played an important part in enabling us to overtake it. These are factors that you must take into account when you are considering whether or not the subsidy has been to heavy. These are factors that you must take into account when you are coming to a conclusion as to whether or not the cut which has been made by the Minister is advisable in all the circumstances.

Reference has been made to other schemes—to what will come on in the place of wheat. In my view, there is room for the development of the barley-growing and oat-growing industries side by side with the growing of wheat. In fact, I am sure of it. Bear in mind that we had, before, the same Minister coming to us with what he considered to be a fool-proof policy for economic development, especially in the agricultural field. What was the outcome of it? The outcome was that we lost I think somewhere in the region of 1,000,000 acres of tillage.

I remember the chaos that reigned among farmers in connection with barley. Do we not agree that the scheme that was propounded for egg production resulted in a good deal of loss to the farming community, a good deal of waste of capital? I am not so sure that these schemes the Minister has mentioned will be as successful as he thinks they will be. I hope they will be, but, if I am in doubt, it is because of my experience of what happened in other years.

Reference has been made to this question of speculators and I think this matter has been treated most unfairly. Would it be fair on my part to take what I should say is the biggest company in this city, to look at its financial reports and to note that it pays, say, 18 per cent. by way of dividend and to hold that up as being typical of industry as a whole? To me, it would be madness, for the reason that I am interested in industries that have never paid a penny. I have been interested in industries that not alone never paid a penny but every penny of the capital of which was lost. There must be people who have made considerable sums of money like Senator Burke, but the Minister was unfair to the Houses when he mentioned that, in County Dublin, he knew of ten or 11 people who went in for large-scale wheat farming up to maybe 1,000 acres, and who were in a position to get away with what would seem to be undue profits. What percentage do they form of the total number of wheat growers? That is what is significant. What percentage of the total acreage of wheat was controlled by these particular people? It is unfair to the whole wheat-growing population because of the capacity of a small number to get away with what are considered to be undue profits.

I was very interested in the account given by Senator Cogan in his excellent address last night and the reference he made to Mr. Michael Dillon, an agricultural expert. He has published the accounts of certain large-scale wheat farmers. As an authority, he is prepared to stand over them and the results do not tally with the results achieved by Senator Burke. Again, may I draw the attention of the House to this point? There is a principle in economic—a law, actually—and I would draw Senator Burke's attention to it—which is known as the law of rent. There must be land in Ireland so ideally situated, with capital facilities also favourable, that they would produce wheat at, say, 30/- or 35/- a barrel. There must be super land that could produce effectively at as low a price as that.

We want more wheat than that. As Senator Ó Cíosáin has said, there was a time when we had 21,000 acres of wheat—a three weeks' supply. We are all agreed that that is not sufficient. If you are to get more wheat, then you must raise the price of wheat. The moment you raise the price of wheat, you are bringing in new producers, producers whom it would not pay to produce at the original price. Now it is clear, by and large, that the original group make a special gain because of the raising of the price to attract the second group, and we do not get enough of acreage because of the raising of the price, and we raise it again and so on. As we go on raising the price to get the acreage we require, there are people down the line who are making more profits and more profits as the price goes up.

It is very hard to do anything about that. We know from experience that it is very difficult to have a differential pricing. We were able to do it to some extent during the war. Maybe men will so develop, maybe the standard of charity and the standard of responsibility will so improve in man, that no man will be anxious to make a profit in the way I am indicating, but, things being as they are and men being as they are, they will claim every penny they possibly can, because of the fact that the prices are fixed by the marginal producers. Senator Burke, happily, is well below the margin, and more power to him. I would not wish that all the farmers who have grown wheat would be measured by the success achieved by Senator Burke.

I have attended a threshing, a very big threshing, and I saw the wheat. The owner of the wheat was a very experienced farmer. I said: "It looks pretty good.""Do you know," he said, "there was many a good year I did not have half as good a sample of wheat." But should I take that man as being typical of the whole? No, because, while I may indulge in a certain amount of armchair economics, because of my association with public life and because of an inherent wish to be out among the people, I practise a certain amount of field economics. In the eastern part of my own county, I have met these small men, these small farmers, and I know they have lost heavily on wheat this year. I think it would be wrong that, because Senator Burke has achieved the magnificent success he has achieved this year, the rest of the wheat-producing community should be measured by the same success and the same standard. It would be unreal and it would be wrong. If there are speculators, it is just too bad, but I do not believe they are as numerous as has been mentioned here. In any case, I think it is wrong in principle that because of that handful the rest should be penalised.

Mention was made last night of certain other people getting away with an undue share of the swag. Senator Hawkins drew the attention of the Minister to the Lavery Report. The Minister indulged in a certain amount of histrionics, to use a mild term, and there was a certain amount of laughter on the other side—a mirthless laughter—but the fact is that ex-Senator Lavery was charged to make an inquiry into this matter of millers' profits. He was aided by a very highly qualified technical staff and his findings are therefore for the House to study. His conclusion was that undue profits were not being made.

Finally, I want to say that I have held the House for much longer than I had intended. I should like publicly to express my appreciation of the kindness of the Cathaoirleach in allowing me to continue so long when I should have assumed another duty, but at least I think I have indicated to the House, as sincerely as I could, the reasons why I think that this action of the Minister is untimely, and that the cut is too severe.

As a practical farmer, elected to this House on the Agricultural Panel, I must first of all admit candidly that I have not had a great deal of experience in the growing of wheat. In the county that I come from, the acreage of land held by each owner is small and the fields are not big enough for the growing of wheat to make it a profitable or useful sideline to farming. Therefore, when a person in my position rises to speak in this House he cannot speak altogether for the constituency which he comes from. Each and every one of us, in order to get elected to this House, has to do a country-wide canvass when looking for preference votes. In my canvass tour I met a great many farmers who have grown wheat and are anxious to grow it; farmers to whom the growing of wheat is as essential in their type of agricultural economy as the growing of patatoes, barley and oats is to farmers west of the Shannon.

There can be no doubt whatever but that all our farmers are disappointed and are very much concerned at the reduction in the price of wheat. If for example, an industrialist in this country were told overnight that there would be a 15 per cent. reduction in the price of the finished article that he was producing, he certainly would protest in no uncertain manner against it. Therefore, it is no wonder that our farmers, seeing that the price of wheat is being reduced by something like 15 per cent., are angry with the present Minister for Agriculture. They are angry with him because he has had to take on himself the very ugly task of reducing the price of wheat this season. To make matters even worse, for both the Minister and the farmer we have experienced this year the worst harvest weather in living memory as a result of which hundreds of acres of wheat and of all cereal crops have been lost. Every effort was made to save those crops but it was of no avail.

We find that even in the case of cereal crops that were stacked and thatched and well attended to in the haggards of the smallest farmers and of the wheat grain which had been threshed and secured in the barns, the grain itself is of much inferior quality to what we were used to in days when we had good harvest weather. These, of course, are things over which the Minister has had no control. This other consideration arises that, even if we had been blessed with good harvest weather such as we had over the previous five or six years, we would still be faced with this predicament— it may be a good one or a bad one— that we would have more wheat on our hands than would be necessary for the country's needs. In that situation there would be only one thing for us to do and that was to try and find an export market for it. Assuming that we could, we would then find ourselves in competition with the great wheat-growing countries such as Canada, the United States, Australia and perhaps the Ukraine, where wheat can be grown under the best weather conditions. Consequently their wheat is of superior quality to what we can produce here.

Because of the high and very encouraging price given to our farmers for wheat, we would have had an exportable surplus of wheat. On the other hand, we find that other cereal crops, as essential in their own way as wheat, have been entirely neglected. We have found that the acreage under oats and barley has been considerably reduced for the reason to put it bluntly that there was more money, easier money and readier money in wheat. In consequence of all that, the Government and the Minister for Agriculture were faced with a very difficult and I would say a nasty problem. I know, of course, that to reduce the price of any agricultural commodity is not a thing which the Minister would be proud of. He would not care to set about reducing the price of any agricultural product essential for the country's economy. Nevertheless, he has to take into consideration the broad economy which affects the entire agricultural population, and, having examined it in that light, he must take some steps to strike an even balance as far as cereal crops and tillage generally are concerned.

We then find ourselves in a position which is unfortunate for the honest, decent, hardworking and industrious farmer who has always grown wheat. He did so when the price of wheat was 30/- a barrel, 50/- or 60/- and when it was 82/6. We find people of that kind being penalised side by side with the gentlemen and the limited companies that came into this country when they saw an easy thing in wheat growing; when they saw the ready money that was in it, even though they did not know anything about wheat growing and perhaps did not even see it being put into the soil or taken out of it. Yet, they came along and were able to secure very substantial profits from every acre of wheat which they grew.

The pity is, of course, that both this type of individual, the speculator, and the honest, industrious mixed farmer had each to take the rap and bear the burden alike, because wheat growing can be a blessing and can be a curse in any country. Those of us who are farmers, even though we only grow a limited amount of wheat which we use ourselves, know that wheat is by far the severest of the cereal crops on the land. Personally, I would rather grow three crops of oats in succession on my land or two crops of barley since they would take less out of the land than one crop of wheat. Cereal crops should not be allowed to be grown unless in proper crop rotation with a root crop in between every second year or at least every two years. If a wheat crop is put in, even on fair or middling land after a root crop, it will give a reasonably good return provided the weather is good.

In the case of the speculators, however, they will grow one, two, three or maybe four crops of wheat in succession on the same land and soil. A person does not need to be a farmer to realise the condition in which that land will be left when four crops of wheat have been taken out of it in succession. It will be of no value whatever to anyone for a considerable number of years. By putting in between, in proper rotation, grass crops—the Minister has always told us that grass should be treated as a crop just the same as cereals—and other crops, we know the growing of wheat can help to break up old pastures and, therefore, bring about the production of a better type of grass as well as everything else.

The speculator farmer has no interest whatever in leaving anything after him other than the ashes of the soil he was tilling. His one object is to get as much as possible out of the wheat crop while the price is high, and clear out after filling his pockets with his gains at the expense of the land, leaving it in poverty behind him. For that type of individual there should be no consideration whatever. Unfortunately, there is no way we can deal with him. These speculator farmers are chiefly people who have rented land from aliens, who purchased land here over the years, and who have never seen it. They bought it only as an investment and they are willing to let it out at the very handsome figure of £20, £25, £30 or even, I am told, £35 per acre for conacre wheat. In the county I come from nobody could pay £30 an acre for land for any crop and make a profit on it.

If you throw in the amount of labour and the cost of seeding, either of the cereal crops or root crops, when our work and labour is over at the end of the year, if you take out of it an average weekly wage for ourselves we would have nothing whatever left, if we had to pay £20 an acre for conacre land to grow any type of crop. Maybe because of the better type of land in the Midlands and in the grain belts in the south-cast of the country and here around Dublin and Louth, people can make it; but, whether they do so or not, conacre taken on that system is a very bad thing to encourage. For this type of individual there should be no concern.

With the guilty come the innocent. The people who have always grown wheat are penalised now. They do not like a reduction from 82/6 to an average of 70/- a barrel. For them this is a loss—and a loss at a time when everybody else is looking for increased salaries, wages and incomes to meet the increased cost of living. Those who have tilled land generation after generation, who take a pride and delight in breaking up their soil and tilling at and who in many cases during the emergency never needed a Department's inspector inside their fields because they were quite willing to do it themselves, those people who are suffering are the people about whom I am concerned most.

While I have great concern for them, I must say that the life of the farmer is just a political football kicked backward and forward from one political Party to another. Listening to the speeches made from the Opposition Benches and reading the speeches made in the Dáil, I have no doubt whatever that had Fianna Fáil been the Government now there would be a reduction, either big or small, in the price of wheat. They may not go as far as the present Minister, but many of them have admitted that it would be all right to bring about a reduction gradually. Their complaint is that there was too big a reduction made in a single year, after such a disastrous harvest. If Fianna Fáil were the Government and if they brought about a reduction in the price of wheat, I have no doubt whatsoever but the Opposition Party who are now the Government would be moving a motion something similar to the motion that has been moved from these benches, demanding a reason why the farmers' price for wheat was being reduced. Therefore, I do not see any single mark of sincerity in the motion here before us.

We all know that the aim of the Fianna Fáil Party was to produce two-thirds or thereabouts of the wheat needs of this country. We know from the figures what we have got. We know they agreed to an International Wheat Agreement, to import 270,000 tons of wheat. I am and will be in agreement with the importation of a certain amount of wheat. If we try to produce bread from our own wheat, a 100 per cent. finished loaf, we know perfectly well we will be faced with inferior quality bread because, due to our climatic conditions and the heavy rainfall, the wheat we grow here cannot possibly, through no fault of ours, be as good as the wheat which comes from abroad; but a mixture of foreign with our own will give us an excellent article, a perfect article, a superior article even to that produced entirely from imported wheat.

Therefore, I agree entirely with the idea of importing a certain amount each year to mix with our own. As well as that, seed wheat is always better for the change. If there is a new type and a new brand which will give heavier yields per acre, which will bushel better, it is certainly ideal and sensible to import that and get the very best brand of grain for the farmers. How could there be sincerity in a motion when the movers know that 270,000 tons of wheat have to be imported and at the same time demand that the price paid be held next year at the level it is at this year? We would import wheat and export our own, which is of inferior quality; we have no storage facilities to hold over a year's supply. Unfortunately for ourselves, when the wheat was threshed and ready to be delivered to the mills, from the modern machines and the combines, we found that the drying facilities in the mills were taxed to their very capacity.

We had questions raised in the Dáil in regard to people who had to wait so many days and weeks to take their wheat. It could not be dried. It was in sacks thrown off the combines in the fields with the rain pouring down upon it. They could not gather the sacks of wheat and the mills would not take them. We had that type of complaint. It went to prove that the mills in this country were taxed to their very capacity in trying to handle and dry the amount of wheat presented to them during this harvest. What would the position be if this was a normal harvest and the amount of wheat 25 per cent. more than it was? If we had an excellent harvest, with imported wheat we would have been in the middle of a wheat muddle which would have cost this country a pretty penny because we would be subsidising the growing of wheat to sell it in England or elsewhere. In other words, we would be taxing our own people to provide cheap wheat for the people of some outside country to eat.

As a farmer, I know that if you have suitable land wheat is a very easy crop to grow. Wheat will stand up when oats and barley will fall down. Even though efforts have been made by Department of Agriculture scientists, not only in this country, but throughout the world, they have failed so far to find any variety of straw in oats or barley which would stand up and resist the weather in the same way as wheat does. In a standing crop modern machinery can go to work. I have heard the combine being abused very much. That is all very fine but how would people manage to gather the harvest, even a fairly small harvest, were it not for the use of some mechanised implement?

After the reaping hook came the scythe. After the scythe came the mowing machine with its reaping attachments. After the mowing machine with its reaping attachments came the reaper and binder and after that came the combine harvester. A combine harvester can be very useful. I do not know what other people think but as a farmer, I know that the young men of to-day do not want to bend their backs in a harvest field like they did ten, 15 or 20 years ago. They are perfectly right because the day when heavy manual toil is taken out of agricultural work will be a boon and a blessing to the farmer and the agricultural labourer. People may say that the introduction of the combine will kill labour on the land. The introduction of a, combine will certainly do away with labour on the land but still you must realise that if farmers do not employ their men entirely for the harvest the people employed as agricultural labourers are generally kept on all the year round. There is no farmer or group of farmers who may have invested in the purchase of a combine who will suddenly dispense with agricultural labourers for the three or four days that a combine would be doing the work and then have to go and look for them afterwards.

Are we discussing the motion at all?

I would like to remind Senator Hickey that when a farmer starts to talk about wheat he certainly knows a good deal more about it than a townsman like Senator Hickey. The method of growing wheat and the systems employed in reaping it may not be of any concern to Senator Hickey or Senator Hickey's Party——

Indeed, it is.

——but it certainly is a big concern of mine.

It is and for us too.

However, the combine has come to stay. At the present moment in order to make wheat harvesting easy people who are interested in the manufacture of agricultural machinery are preparing the plans of a smaller type of combine which is known as a 5 foot cutting bar which will be suitable for small farmers in the West. There is no objection whatsoever to that. The combine works easier on wheat than on oats or barley. Therefore, the combine and wheat growing go sort of hand in hand.

What has the Minister for Agriculture to offer to the farmers who are suffering severe losses because of the price of wheat he has offered? Let us grow more oats and grow more barley. I am in full agreement with him on that. We should spread out our tillage in a different manner. Senator Kissané had his doubts—maybe rightly so— and asked what was to prevent the speculative farmer from coming into the barley or oats market? The speculative farmer will have his advice and he will know that it certainly is not as easy to harvest oats or barley as it is to harvest wheat. I think he will not touch them for the simple reason that they will not stand up like wheat for the modern machines to cut.

I am sorry that the Minister for Agriculture found it necessary to bring about this reduction in price. However, I have enough sense to realise that this country cannot afford to have a lop-sided system of growing cereal crops. We will not ever progress while we have a surplus of one crop and a scarcity of another. I am glad the Minister said yesterday that the oat millers would go out and arrange contracts and prices with the farmers for the acreage of oats sufficient for the country's needs to be grown this year. In addition, the farmers who do not need to send oats to the mills for oatmeal should grow oats and use it for their own needs. They should feed it to live stock, the way it is fed on many farms all over the country. Let the people who want to grow barley for malting purposes make their contracts and let the Minister help them to do so and see that the best prices are obtainable.

At the same time, we should see that the best prices are also given to the people who are anxious to grow feeding barley. I admit there will be more labour and more hard work involved in the harvesting of either oats or barley, than in the harvesting of wheat. I know that a barley crop or an oat crop is not as severe on the land as a wheat crop. I would prefer to grow three crops of oats to one of wheat. I think that though the farmers on whom the price is reduced may have suffered a set back, and none of us like that, they need not be discouraged.

I would ask the Minister to use his power and influence to do what he has already promised to do in regard to the other crops. I believe he will do go and I believe he will make good to the farmers the losses which they have suffered as a result of the reduction in the price of wheat. It is because I believe in these things that I am opposing the motion that is before the House.

I hope it will be in order for somebody who is not a farmer to speak a little bit about this motion. In doing so, I should like to emphasise a side of it which has been touched on but has not really been very closely examined and that is the aspect of it that, to me, provides a solution of the very vexed problem of how much home-grown wheat we should have in this country and how much imported wheat. The farmer grows wheat in order that he may live and we eat the product of what he grows in order that we may live.

For a considerable time I have been very much interested in and concerned about the question of our bread. I believe the quality of our bread can be considerably improved. It has had ups and downs and it requires to be kept under continual observation. The problems that arise in connection with the quality of our bread—which, at times, can be very low, indeed—all converge on the amount of home-grown wheat that it is necessary to grow. I do not intend to fatigue the House by dwelling on the difficulties of dealing with wheat which has a very high water content: it has been emphasised that that is part of the consequence of our climate and the consequence of the type of wheat we grow. The result is that it involves us in all these trying problems and it also provides us with a type of grist that has not the same sustaining qualities as some of the imported meal. Therefore, it seems to me, putting it quite blunty, that if we want a satisfactory loaf we have a certain line beyond which we cannot go with regard to our home-grown wheat—and that is simply that.

The advocates of a very extensive home-grown wheat programme appear to me to require to do two things. In the first place, they must assure us that they can breed a variety of wheat that will stand up to our climatic conditions and give us a better grain with a higher protein content—one that will not require to be treated to the same extent and that will give a better loaf that will not go stale so quickly. That is a chemical problem. The second thing they will have to develop a bit more is the question of fertilisers. We are extraordinarily extravagant with our fertilisers. We import them at very considerable expense and then we automatically throw them down the drain. Ultimately, we shall have to develop our methods of sewage farming and the recovery of the valuable phosphate and potassium that we are simply throwing away. Wheat, the most caluable of all food materials, is rich in certain of these substances or requires them for its growth.

I most heartily agreed with Senator Ó Buachalla when he traced the importance of wheat and bread. It is sometimes chastening to realise that if we were deprived of bread for a week we should be completely extinguished. Any country exposed to such an intensive famine would surrender within a matter of days. If we have not got that food resource stored within us, we have to see that it is stored outside. During the early war period, the question of grain storage became very acute. I emphasised, although it was hardly necessary for me to do so, the undesirability of having all our grain stored in one region, where it would be exposed to the hazard of a bomb, a fire or sabotage. The result is that we now have very highly developed plans and schemes in operation for the drying and storing of grain throughout the country.

It is just in connection with these that I should like to say something, because they have a bearing on this wheat motion. I checked over the figures and I find that the silos erected in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford are capable of housing 75,000 to 100,000 tons of grain. By the very nature of their construction and the expense in making and in operating them, they can only economically be used with a minimum handling of 350,000 to 400,000 tons per year. Suppos-for ing we shifted over entirely, or very largely, to our home grown wheat. That would entail only one handling in the year. The result is that we should have this very elaborate machinery set up for wheat discharging and storage being required for only a fraction of what it can operate. That would mean that we should be making very poor economic use of certain mechanical facilities which are at present in the country and which are very good indeed. That is something that ought to be borne in mind.

As a result of agitation, policy, and so forth, we have built up a very fine grain-discharging and silo chain. To keep it operating, we require a certain amount of material to operate with— and a good deal of that will have to come from outside if this system is to be really economic. One can, without endeavouring to involve oneself in the most dangerous of all topics, economics, work out the difference one might save, in theory, between buying all our wheat outside and home-grown wheat with our subsidy. I worked out the figure at round about £4,000,000. Supposing we split the difference and say 50-50, that is, 50 home grown and 50 imported. The saving would be approximately £2,000,000 plus minus X. What exactly are we getting for that?

I think Senator Ó Buachalla summarised the situation clearly. In concentrating on the home-produced wheat, we are paying particular attention to food reserves in time of emergency, on having the mechanism for food-growing in time of emergency and on protecting our line against the dangers of blockade, and so forth. Then the question is: Have we got to protect it? God knows what the next war will be like. The 1914-18 war was chemical. The last war was physical. The danger is that the next war will be biological. I firmly believe that, if our wheat resources can provide us with 50 per cent. or 60 per cent. of our requirements, we shall have the framework that will provide us with 100 per cent. of our requirements in time of danger. An emergency might come upon us suddenly, within 24 hours. We could meet that by having enough grain to keep us going for, say, Z months in the absence of any supplies at all.

That brings me to the last point in connection with this motion and that is, again, the water content of our wheat. It has to be dried—and the drying is the troublesome thing, the drying and the transport. There must come a point when the increased production and the increased handling of the wheat is no longer economic in view of the expense involved in drying. I am certain that that can be worked out and equated by the economists. However, it brings me back again to that 50-50 figure.

Approaching this motion from an entirely independent angle, it seems to me that somewhere between 50 and 60 per cent. is the sort of satisfactory figure we should try to work on. We can shift over to oats and we can shift over to cattle foods and so forth, but if we can keep our home figure down to about the 50's, I think our friends and neighbours and the tourists coming into the country will be able to speak of the very good bread we have in this country. I should like to base my reluctance to support the motion on the ground of the better loaf—the white flour and the blameless loaf.

I am somewhat shy about intervening in this debate because I am not a farmer, and, after hearing the remarks of Senator Commons, any man who does so and who is not a farmer would certainly be expected to have some hardihood. While I am not a farmer, however, I have a certain amount of experience of the farmer's life—sufficient to have a great deal of sympathy with him. I recognise that the farmer's life is hazardous and very hard, and, above all things, I recognise that, as Senator Commons said, they have become the playthings of politicians, particularly of the two major Parties who dominate political life in this country. It is nearly time the farmers recognised that, and I think the time of recognition is very rapidly approaching and the advent of a farmer's trade union may change the situation.

Here to-day and previously in the Dáil, the question of wheat was debated. I remember the time when beet was the burning question. I remember, when the sugar beet industry was set up, Deputy Derrig coming to our town of Carlow where the first sugar factory was located and describing it as a white elephant. I remember some few years afterwards, when the Government changed, meeting one of our prominent Senators in Thurles and hearing him describe the sugar beet industry as a Fianna Fáil industry and claiming complete credit for it. The same thing is happening to-day with wheat and I agree with Senator Commons when he says that if the Fianna Fáil Party had been returned to power on the last occasion, they very probably would have reduced the price of wheat, and we would then have the Fine Gael representatives making the speeches in defence of the farmers and in support of the maintenance of the price at present being made by Fianna Fáil.

That is unfortunate, because it is recognised that agriculture is our major industry and that on the prosperity of agriculture depends the comfort and well-being of all of us. Where you have farmers encouraged to take a particular line and to adopt a particular policy in relation to their industry by one Party and where you have that policy reversed immediately there is a change of Government, it is natural that the industry as a whole should suffer. In relation to this particular matter, I have great sympathy with the farmers who were encouraged to the utmost to produce wheat under the previous Government. They were encouraged to such an extent that they produced too much. That is really all that happened and now we have a situation in which they are being discouraged again, and the farmers who made the heavy investment in wheat production which it was necessary to make find themselves pretty much out on a limb.

This sort of situation will continue to exist while we have the farmers so much at the mercy of the political Parties and while there continues to be no regulation between the supply of and the demand for a particular commodity. The beet industry has been mentioned several times. The situation which is now in existence in regard to wheat could not come about in the beet sugar industry because there is such a tight regulation between the demand from the sugar company and the supply of beet to the factories, and if a similar arrangement could be made between the wheat growers, or the barley and oats growers, and the people who use their crops, we would get away from this situation of having perpetual surpluses, followed by continued reductions in prices.

I agree that, in the present situation, something had to be done. There is nobody who could justify our giving an excessively high price for wheat when we were already producing more than we wanted. The price being given for wheat was a price given to encourage farmers to get over the prejudice that many of them had against wheat and, so well did they get over it that they grew too much. We could not continue then surely to pay that excessive subsidy when we had reached the position of having more than we wanted.

It has been mentioned by several Senators that the subsidy to agriculture is the same as the subsidy to other industries, but there is a little difference. When a subsidy is paid to a manufacturing industry, the subsidy is given, but the market is not guaranteed. There is no industry that is told: "Go ahead and manufacture as much as you can and the State will guarantee to buy all you produce at this excessive price, no matter how much you produce." That was the situation that existed as far as wheat growing was concerned—the farmer was told: "Produce all you can and we will give you this very nice price for it." If such a situation arose in a cement factory or a sugar factory and the Government had to buy from the manufacturers in a protected industry all they produced and then found themselves within a year or two unable to get rid of it anywhere else, there would be an outcry from everybody in the nation.

It has been mentioned, and I agree, that the reduction in the subsidy for wheat should be passed on to the person who buys the loaf. I think that should be done, but, when considering that, we should remember that the reduction will not take effect until next year and perhaps the reduction will be passed on to the bread. If it is not so passed on, it is at least a reduction in taxation generally, and if we reduce taxation generally, we must help to reduce the cost of living. If we save £1,000,000 on this subsidy, it means that one-tenth of the farmers are losing and nine-tenths of the farmers, plus all the rest of the nation, have the benefit of the £1,000,000 saved.

Including the civil servants.

I was about to mention the civil servants, for Deputy Cogan's information, and to remind him that, so far as I was concerned, I felt that the civil servants were entitled to the increase they got. That is not an opinion of mine; it is the finding of an independent arbitration or tribunal, set up to examine the case and the then Government failed to keep their word to the civil servants and to pay the money. I think there was a moral obligation on them to do so and I am glad the money was paid.

With regard to the point about speculators, a good deal of use has been made of this word "speculator" and, as Senator Cogan said, it is becoming a "hate" word. I would be delighted in my political philosophy if it would become more or less of a hate word. I think that speculation is regarded as the fundamental of progress in our system of society.

The person who speculated his money to get more money is looked upon as something of a hero. The only reason that people who speculated in wheat are now being hated, if we may use the word, is that they put everybody in an awkward spot. It may be held by the Fianna Fáil Party that they gave the Minister for Agriculture a very good stick with which to drive his case along the road and, on the other hand, it may be held that they did something that was wrong. In industry generally, surely the speculator is looked upon as a bit of a hero. We do not complain about people who speculate in cement, in flour or in textiles, and even yesterday when the House was debating another Bill I did not hear any complaint about the bankers who speculate their money and lend it to the Government at 4 per cent. with the backing of the nation. That sort of speculation is just the same as that which takes place in wheat, and if the opinions expressed about wheat speculators were to be applied to speculation generally and if that indicated that the mind of this House was tending towards investment for national interest instead of investment for personal advancement, I think the hate which Senator Cogan referred to would be all to the good.

A great deal of play was made in propaganda before the election with statements about Governments breaking promises, but it is no harm to remember that this Government is not a Fine Gael Government at all, that it is an inter-Party Government and that its policy is the policy agreed on by the various Parties in it and issued as a 12-point programme. I am not a farmer and it is not fair of me to take up the time of the House when there are so many farmers who are vitally interested in this matter; but I am a bread eater and so are all the people I represent. As such, I am very anxious that the supply of bread should continue, and for that reason I think there should be a good deal of encouragement in the matter of wheat production. I could not agree, however, that the price which was paid and which produced this unexportable surplus should continue to be paid, and for that reason I am opposing the motion.

I wish to support the motion. I think it is a reasonable one and I was hoping on my way to the House, that it would be accepted. I am still not without hope that the motion will be accepted. The Minister softened the cut in the price of wheat by announcing a price of 40/- a barrel for barley. I am afraid that that price of 40/- will not be accepted by the country as any compensation for the losses incurred through the cut in the price of wheat. I suggest that what this House has to decide is, what is right and fair for the Irish farmer.

The Minister may get a big majority in this House to support him in defeating the motion. He says that he has the country with him. If a plebiscite were taken of Irish farmers, of their wives and families and workers I think that the Minister would get a rude awakening. I fear that he and many members of this House do not understand how severe the harvest weather was. Wheat is rotting uncut in the fields. Along almost every road one can still see wheat growing in the fields and in a rotten state. Near New-bridge there are 300 acres of it in one block. The same is true of Dundalk and on almost every road over which one travels one can see wheat rotting in the stooks. The same is true of wheat in bags and in the barns.

A good deal has been said about the speculator. I know one at least who hired land and invested £4,000 in wheat growing in 1953. He made £500 on the transaction. He repeated the investment in 1954 and lost £2,000. I know that to be correct. I think that most of the speculators are dead and unfortunately, I fear many of the honest-to-God farmers are practically dead, dead to wheat growing and to tillage at least.

I attended many meetings of farmers during the last month or six weeks at which wheat was discussed from all sides. In 1951 it was mentioned that about half the crop was eaten by the midge fly in one or two nights. In 1954 the weather was so disastrous that there is no need to talk about it. The losses were extensive. Many people will never overcome the losses they sustained. A stunning blow was given to our farmers when the reduction in the price of wheat was announced. I heard one farmer describe it in this way. He said it was like kicking a man when he was down. Another farmer, of a more classical turn of mind, described it as the most unkindest cut of all. Most of the people attending those meetings were friends of the Minister and of the Parliamentary Secretary, and they were all as outspoken as the people who were opposed to the Government. The matter may be treated as a political affair in this House, but the people of the country are in no mood to treat it as a political affair.

In the middle of the worst harvest ever experienced in our time, or I believe in any time, we had a talk over the radio on income-tax. A learned gentleman in this House was one of the people taking part in that debate, the trend of which was to impose income-tax on the farmers. The farmers listening to that talk were bewildered. They were up to their eyes working, trying to save their little bit of harvest, and here was a talk over the radio indicating that they were, so to speak, to be exterminated.

The cut in the price of wheat will knock the bottom out of tillage. A farmer without tillage is in a very poor way indeed, and a nation without tillage cannot survive. The extensive acreage of wheat grown in 1954 is evidence that the farmers are prepared to increase agricultural production if they see a chance of getting paid for their labour. All economists agree that increased agricultural production is the one thing that will make for the salvation of this country and here we are—because I believe the motion will be defeated—putting back the hands of the clock.

The Minister for Agriculture is the head of the agricultural community. I would appeal to him to stop and pause and to reconsider his decision before it is too late. He has a golden opportunity of making this country what it ought to be, one of the foremost agricultural countries in Europe. The effort made by the wheat growers in 1954 is evidence that as far as the farmers go, they are prepared to work if they see a chance of getting paid for their labour. Good leadership is needed now. It is up to the Minister for Agriculture to give it, but he will achieve nothing but disaster by cutting the price of wheat and by knocking the bottom out of tillage.

The Minister is fond of using a parable which runs like this: "Every good farmer should have the ambition of leaving his land in better heart than he found it." I say that applies with far greater force to the Minister himself. I hope that he will heed my words and will pause and consider before it is too late.

The Minister is offering farmers nothing but increased costs and reduced prices. The natural reaction to that will be decreased agricultural production and that will be bad for everybody. The Minister says: "Bear with me for a year and you will see how right I am." I am afraid that within a year we will see how wrong his policy is. Other speakers have dealt with the question of continuity of policy. I say that continuity of policy is a vital matter for a country like this where most of our farmers are struggling. If one Government says: "Grow wheat, grow beet and increase your tillage," and another Government comes along and knocks the bottom out of that policy, well there is not much hope of progress.

The Minister for Agriculture had to issue licences for the import of malting barley recently. I am aware that many people applied to the maltsters this year for contracts to grow malting barley and were refused them. Is it any wonder then that barley had to be imported this year when contracts would not be made with the farmers who were prepared to grow it?

I do not know how the 1955 price compares with the world price, but I do know that for 20 years we were growing wheat at less than the world price. It has also been said that there is little labour content in the growing of wheat. Wheat is a crop that cannot be grown continuously. You cannot follow wheat crop after wheat crop, and the intervening crop gives a high labour content. There were many people who grew wheat crop after wheat crop this year and the result was that the crop was attacked by two diseases, "Take All" and "Eye Spot," and the wheat went down flat. It never filled and in many cases was not cut. Where it was cut the result hardly paid for the labour involved. As I have already said, farmers see nothing but increased costs and reduced prices. The reaction to that will be reduced output. That will mean less money in circulation and less employment. I hope the House will hesitate before turning down the motion and will be alive to the absurdity of doing so before it is too late.

I do not believe there was ever a motion as important as this and on which I have heard so many different points of view. I will have to vote against it, but it is not with any great pleasure that I do so. Were it not for the circumstances that follow and the reason that I will give, I would be very slow to do so. Senator Bergin has stated rightly that the policy of the inter-Party Government was economy and a reduction of the cost of living. I am one of those who speak from my heart when I say that the farmers are the wrong class to start on. No matter in what capacity we are employed or what our station in life, whether we are civil servants or medical practitioners, we are all dependent on the farmer and the produce he takes out of his soil to feed us. Therefore, I am not too happy that the farmer should be the first when any economy is taking place.

At the same time, something had to be done to stop what had become a racket. I say that because I can prove it has become a racket. Since I was a youngster there was one type of person who was hated and that was the land grabber. During the land wars in the West of Ireland the one person for whom everyone had contempt was the land grabber, the people who took advantage of the price of wheat and who grabbed land and did not leave it within the reach of the small farmer.

Was it not open competition?

Competition is good but not when you can prove that a person is not alone depriving his neighbour of the land but is robbing the very fertility out of the soil, for after two years on that most fertile soil it will not even grow grass.

Did the owner not offer it on the market?

I cannot follow that point. On the question of the speculator, you must have admiration for a person who speculates in certain directions but not when that speculation is going to do a grievous injury to the nation and, if war broke out, deprive the citizens of food. We must have short memories if we cannot remember that the greatest asset we had during the World War was the bank of fertility we had built up, the fertile lands we had and—the Minister does not agree with me on this—the horses and the men we had to go into that soil and produce wheat, oats and other crops.

It may be interesting to those who spoke to know there was land in County Dublin so fertile that it was taken by plot holders and that it grew potatoes without either farmyard manure or fertiliser. I want to warn everyone that if you grow two crops of wheat, the land will not grow even potatoes unless you put in a very heavy coat of farmyard manure. I hear a lot of talk about the combine being a blessing. On what amount of land can you use a combine? Senator Commons spoke about Mayo. Wheat will not grow in the greater portion of Mayo—and I would challenge contradiction on that, as I am a native of Mayo and a farmer's son from Mayo— not if you put all the farmyard manure in the place on it. I would nearly say you would be lucky in County Mayo if you got back double the seed you put in. I would say to Senator Cogan that the amount of land that will grow wheat in County Wicklow is very limited.

A Senator

He is not a Wicklow man.

We are supposed to have 12,000,000 acres of arable land. In my humble opinion, as a person reared on the mountainy lands of Mayo, as a person who has grown wheat in the fertile lands of County Dublin, the amount of land capable of growing wheat is very small. In County Dublin, in Louth and Meath you have practical farmers who down through the years employed labour. Of course, it was never a good wage, but they gave the full trade union rate to their employees. Those men should not be put on the same level as the speculator. You have in County Dublin farmers who have the same men employed for many years. I know one farmer who has three men—one employed for 46 years, one for 42 years and one for 38 years; and between these three farm labourers they reared 34 children—so they must not have felt want. These farmers grew wheat at all times, they grew oats, potatoes, cabbage and every type of food. They kept a small number of dairy cows. That is the type of farmer you want. They reared so many cattle stall-fed in the winter time with the result that they had manure for their land and they did not take away the fertility— and also they rotated their crops. Here you have in the last couple of years these gentlemen grabbing up every acre of conacre—people who tilled not even an acre during the emergency— so that the farmers who are beside it cannot get it at all. It was time to stop that. For that reason alone I have to vote against the motion. However, I would like to warn the Minister that the farmer needs all the encouragement he can get. If you are to make a farm pay, if you work it honestly, you have to work late and early and the family has to work without payment; they do not get a week's wages, yet they are the people who produce our food and on whom we are depending.

They are the people who will be penalised.

They are worthy of consideration by all classes. Senator O'Brien made a very able statement last night. In fact, I doubt if I ever heard anything better. There was one point, however, upon which I absolutely disagree with him and that was where he said we should not have a war-time policy in peace time. That would be wrong. If we went away from the growing of wheat altogether it would be wrong. Suppose a war were to break out, you would never change over to the growing of wheat even in one season. We must encourage the practical farmer to continue to grow at least 50 per cent. of the wheat we require. There could not be a rapid change over because the seeds and the machinery would not be available. Neither would the people be available to handle the wheat.

Senator Fearon also made a statement with which I do not agree. I read —I speak subject to correction—several times in different newspapers during the war where the medical profession both here and in other countries said that the less white bread eaten the healthier the people and that the dark loaf was better than any other. Unless my memory serves me very badly that was the statement issued at that time. It might well be, of course, that that statement was made in order to satisfy the people who were eating black bread. At all events, the statement was freely made by the medical association and by prominent medical men here and in other countries.

This question of wheat should be completely divorced from politics. That is the first essential to ensure the prosperity of the nation. To give one instance of the extent to which wheat is mixed up in politics in this country it will be sufficient for me to relate this story. Some years ago I met a friend who came from a county where they would not grow wheat. We went out to a certain portion of County Dublin where there were acres of wheat. My friend said to me: "I do not know how anybody would be elected here except a Fianna Fáil supporter. They must be all Fianna Fáil supporters here." The poor man had got the idea that nobody except Fianna Fáil supporters grew wheat. I say that is about the most dishonest statement that was ever made. My experience is completely different. Fianna Fáil preached it but other people practised it. I know from the most ardent supporters of other Parties in County Dublin and from men independent of politics——

Had they not a five year guarantee?

That was even before the guarantee. Incidentally, on the question of guarantees we got a lot of guarantees which were not fulfilled but it is better not to pursue that subject. With regard to the points made by Senator Cogan, I agree with a lot of them. After all, this is a very serious question for the farmers. I would not apply the word "farmer" to speculators. They would not know how to grow a drill of potatoes. They never grew a stone of potatoes, a barrel of oats or a head of cabbage. You would not call them farmers. I feel that the land should be taken from people such as these. People of that kind are not an asset in any shape or form. It is a question of how best to separate the wheat from the chaff.

The people from Mayo, Kerry, Donegal and Cork who got holdings of land around Gibbstown are doing great work. I would like if some of the people in this country would pay a visit to Gibbstown and see the amount of food those people produced on their small holdings without either tractor or binder. They work with horses. They are a credit to the nation. Take the dairyman around County Dublin——

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Dairying does not arise on this motion.

It does, because the land that some of the dairy farmers used in County Dublin was grabbed up by the speculator at £36 where heretofore the dairy man had it for £15 per acre. The result was that he had to feed his cows inside all during the summer. However, I would like to suggest that the Government should set up a commission—I have no great faith in commissions myself—to go into this whole question of wheat. The people who would be on that commission should be completely divorced from politics and they should be men who understand and who produced wheat. The fact that we were able to produce so much wheat during the war was a great asset.

Senator Bergin hit the nail on the head when he stated that the number of people who would gain as the result of the giving of an excessive price for wheat would be very limited. I suppose that in all the circumstances one has to do what suits the greatest number of people. We should encourage the growing of oats. Oats and barley are not severe on the land. I was surprised to hear some Senator state that wheat was not severe on the land. Oats are not severe on the land but wheat could be ultimately.

On what does the Senator base that argument?

On facts.

Is the Senator in a position to substantiate it?

So much so that I can tell Senator O'Reilly about the case of one particular farmer who had fertile land. During the first year he got 26 barrels to the acre. In the second year the land grew 14 barrels. In the third year it grew 6. The farmer was foolish enough to put in the crop the fourth year and he did not get back the seed. It took four years afterwards to give back any fertility to the soil. That man was an owner of land. My own point of view is that if the nation is to survive we must have mixed farming.

I would suggest the setting up of a commission to go into this whole question of wheat growing. I would give not 82/- per barrel but 100/- per barrel to the farmer who pays a trade union rate of wages to his employee and gives employment the whole year round. Does anybody suggest that the man who uses a combine and who works a couple of weeks in the springtime and two weeks during the harvest time gives employment? The work is often under slave conditions. That type of farmer never had a man employed for the whole year, and he is no asset to the nation. To put a halter on that type of person, I will have to vote against the motion. I suggest this is a serious matter and it deserves the greatest consideration of the best brains within the nation in order to save the farmer.

Business suspended at 6 p.m. and resumed at 7 p.m.

It is not my intention to take up much of the time of the Seanad by making anything in the nature of a long speech in connection with this motion. I was present during the greater part of the debate since the motion was moved yesterday afternoon. I have heard the arguments for and against but I cannot say that I have heard any argument for the motion that was an answer to the statement made here by the Minister yesterday.

The Minister has been accused, directly or indirectly, of being hostile to wheat cultivation. That may or may not be so, I do not believe he is, and there is this fact which must be faced —that, since the Minister and the Government he belongs to became responsible for the administration of this country they have accepted the fact that quite a big number of farmers have gone in for wheat cultivation and, as a result of that, they have given those people every encouragement and assistance.

One of the first acts in 1948, was, as the Minister pointed out, to give a guaranteed price for wheat for two years. Talking about a guaranteed price, much play has been made about certain promises that were made during the recent general election campaign to the effect that the present Taoiseach, the present Minister for Agriculture and others speaking for them promised that, if they were returned to power, they would give a guaranteed price for wheat. Certainly they made that promise, but they did not say they would give war prices or that they would continue the excessive subsidies that were paid or are to be paid for the current period.

I think it cannot be disproved that the Minister for Agriculture, since he accepted responsibility for that Department, has been very considerate to the farmers. He has proved himself their friend in every way. He has always regarded them as masters of their own households and farms. While he was prepared to give them the cooperation of his Department in improving their lot, he at no time took any measure that was in the nature of coercion where they were concerned. As I say, I think that that cannot be disproved.

In so far as the recent bad harvest or bad years is concerned, one of the first acts of the Minister was to raise the figure of the moisture content of wheat, so that those who produced it would be immune from the consequences of having to market their wheat with a greater moisture percentage than that originally fixed.

There has been quite an amount of talk about the inadequate price set out in the figures indicated by the Minister which are now objected to, but I think a price which is from 12/6 to £1 per barrel in excess of that at which foreign millable dried wheat could be delivered in this country is no small inducement to those who are concerned with wheat production, to carry on. I have it from quite a big number of farmers who do produce wheat—just as much as they can handle —that they are quite satisfied that, granted even reasonable weather, they will have a good margin of profit in the price indicated by the Government which is now objected to.

A few speakers referred to the fact that farmers were the playthings of the two major political Parties. That may be so, but, mind you, the interests of the farmers—I think the House will be with me in this—either directly or indirectly, takes up the business of Dáil Eireann for at least 75 per cent. of its time, so that, if they are the playthings of the two political Parties, they at least manage to occupy the greater part of the attention of those two Parties, no matter which is the Government.

It has been stated also that the attitude of the present Government, in so far as reduction of price is concerned, will discourage wheat production, and those responsible are being accused of being the originators of that reduction. I think it was pointed out by the Minister yesterday evening that, if you can regard any statement as a discouragement of increased wheat production, that statement emanated from the Opposition as a Government last January, when, as a result of a directive, they set out to arrange that the maximum production of native wheat would not exceed 300,000 tons. That was a discouragement and those concerned must shoulder the responsibility for it. On top of that, as has been pointed out several times during the debate, they agreed to take 270,000 tons of foreign wheat that, added to the requirements of the country, fixed at 450,000 tons, would leave a surplus of 120,000 tons and nobody on the Opposition side has yet answered what they would do with that surplus.

In the course of his statement yesterday, the Minister rightly said that the best test of the success of any policy is the results attained by it, and we cannot gainsay the fact that this year we have, as a result of Government policy, an over-supply of inferior wheat, whereas oats and barley are nonexistent in this country and have to be imported—two grain crops that are absolutely necessary for the expansion and development of our livestock and poultry industry. For these reasons, I maintain that the Minister has definitely answered the points made in the motion calling for a revision or reconsideration of the change of price. He has given a convincing answer to the arguments put forward by all those who have spoken in favour of the motion, and, if it is put to a division, I will vote against it.

Several speakers have stated that it is regrettable that wheat should be dragged into the area of politics and I think we can all agree with that. If a lot of the people here present, and especially the older people, will rack their memories and go back, they will find that they can very easily carry themselves back to the period when wheat was not the plaything of political Parties, but when it was what it was then intended to be, that is, one of the pillars on which national survival was to be built. That was the period when the Sinn Féin policy was adopted by the Republican Party after 1916. The food to feed the people of Ireland was to be grown in Ireland, as against Ireland having to continue to be the fruitful mother of flocks and herds to supply cheap meat to the British market. That was put forward by Arthur Griffith and those who claim to be still following the lead he gave, at a later stage should be the last people to turn away from his doctrine. He it was who said: "If you can procure an Irish article and if it is going to cost you more than the foreign article, as a good Irishman, you are in duty bound to purchase at the higher price." Will anybody here say that that is not a statement of that great economist who is dead and gone?

I consider that it is most unfair just to treat wheat as one of the cereals or crops that can be produced from the soil here, to put it on a par with all the other things which are mainly intended for animal feeding. We are living in a world of uncertainty. Everybody agrees that we are still under the clouds of war. Nobody can deny that the world at present is an uncertain world, except that the guns are not rattling, and if war is to come upon the world again in our time, or at some time in the future, bear in mind that the opportunities that were available in 1938 and 1939 to get into your stride with wheat growing and to get in sufficient wheat from abroad to keep you going will never be available again.

If war breaks out again, if you have not enough to maintain your people and to supply seed for sufficient land to grow enough wheat in the following year and subsequent years to maintain your people, only one thing can happen: this little country of ours will have to throw in its lot with some of the belligerents and will have to pay for food from abroad—with what? With the blood of Irishmen as was the position in the past. That is the price that will have to be paid for wheat. If you are in a position to do so, or if anybody is callous enough to measure blood and treasure in pounds, shillings and pence, I ask you to think seriously over it. Furthermore, if something extra has been given, if more than his due has been given to the Irish farmer, is it not very little after the ten hard years of struggling through the war, short of machinery, short of parts for replacement, short of fertilisers and everything else, when he had to turn up much more ground to grow sufficient wheat to feed the people?

If he is getting a little extra since times became normal, is it a crime? I do not think other sections of the community would begrudge it to him. Can we go back to 1946, which was not as bad a year as this, when there was no possibility of getting any stuff from abroad? Remember how they answered the call at that time. It was better to pay something over and above to the farmers than to buy extra wheat, at an unfavourable rate of exchange, in the dollar areas. Bear that in mind. This year, if the terrible surplus we have been hearing about had been there, would not there be a way of disposing of it? Would it not take the place of imported maize? Surely it is as right to feed it to animals as it is for the Yanks to burn it when they could get no market for it, because of a world surplus? Surely it is as right and just for the Irish people to turn the wheat surplus into animal feeding, because undoubtedly it would come back in the form of mutton, beef and bacon just as it would come back in the form of flour. Let us look at the matter in that light. Let us be broadminded about it. I consider it as a form of insurance.

As far as the conacre man is concerned, he is called different names— grabber. In my native county, Limerick, a "grabber" is some one who took land wrongfully from somebody else. That is the only definition of "grabber" I have ever known in my county. These people up here who have committed this terrible crime against the nation have, I think, not taken land from anybody. As far as I know, the land was offered on the market. The best horse past the fence first took the tillage and put money into it. Call him whatever you like, a speculator, but such a man took a chance and had no guarantee and probably has nobody's sympathy. Sometimes he got good dividends, but if he went down he got sympathy from no one. I saw such people called racketeers in war-time, yet they proved to be most useful, because they took the land and grew a large quantity of wheat; they grew a pile of it in my county.

I know of a Kerry man who came in and took hundreds of acres. What would you call him? Through his industry he got a stone crusher, and he worked for the Kerry County Council for so much a day. He came into the western portion of County Limerick, and bought agricultural machinery— binders, ploughs, and so forth. He ploughed up several big farms. That man did a great day's work, because he tilled a large area, which otherwise would only have yielded 10 per cent. of what it did yield. If 500- and 1,000-acre farms were not available for tillage they would be available for grazing; cattle would be raised, and then shipped across the Irish sea. I think it was a better job to grow wheat to feed the Irish people, than to raise beef to feed the people of another country. A man who goes into the cattle trade is surely as big a racketeer as a man who takes land for tillage. I think that should be borne in mind. Anybody who is trying to make a livelihood, if you like, between the producer and the consumer, is as much a racketeer—whatever you like to call him—or as good a business man, if you like. It has to be done, otherwise people could not get a living. They are all getting good livelihoods, at least a big majority of them. They took a chance of going down, and if they went down, that was their funeral. There is a way of dealing with these people, to keep them out of the wheat business. That could easily have been done.

Somebody said that, if we exported surplus wheat, it would command a very poor price, because it was inferior, compared with wheat grown in Canada and other places. I remember long ago, before World War 1, that it was usual for the small farmers to grow wheat. There was a twofold purpose; it kept them from going to the shops for flour, and in addition it provided them with straw to thatch their houses, and such houses were much more numerous than they are to-day. Those farmers threshed approximately a bag of corn at a time. There were no up-to-date mills, no system of kiln drying; they took it to the ordinary mills, which were worked by water. Though the flour might be a bit heavy in colour these people made it into bread, which was superior to any bread sold to-day, and those using it proved it in the work they did.

I remember when the wheat grown by the farmer was crushed at home by what, I suppose, would now be looked upon as an antiquated system. The bread made from it was quite good and if people had plenty of it they need never grumble.

I think it was Senator O'Brien who said that the growing of wheat was all right as a war-time policy but not as a peace-time policy. I think everyone has a good idea now of the foolishness of an approach such as that to the growing of wheat. Apparently, the Senator is of opinion that the farmers of this country never had any regard for wheat growing. That opinion of his was also wrong, as every farmer listening to me knows. We often see farms advertised for sale. Farmers look at the land and come to the conclusion that it is a good farm because it has a fairly high valuation. The high valuation indicates that more than a generation ago it was a great farm for wheat growing and at the time of Griffith's valuation that was how a value was put on land. That was the basis on which the valuation was fixed, that the land was good for the growing of wheat. Those who came into possession of those farms afterwards were mulcted with high valuations. The explanation of the latter is that the land had a reputation for producing good wheat crops.

Some Senator said that wheat cannot be grown on land two years in succession. That may be so in regard to some land. I want, however, to tell the Senator who said that that we have land in this country which can grow six crops of wheat, year after year.

There is land in the County Cork, slobland which was reclaimed from the sea, and you could get six crops of wheat off it in succession. That is land that will not grow root crops or other crops. It is land that will grow wheat and nothing else.

The question of subsidisation was referred to. Some Senator said that if we continue to increase the acreage under wheat it will mean an increase in the subsidy which we are paying at present, and that that in turn will tend to limit the acreage under oats and barley. I am afraid that the acreage in regard to these two crops, whether they are grown under contract or otherwise, will have to be limited. Everyone knows that the demand for oats has dropped considerably, due to the fact that our horse population has fallen so much. The horse was the main consumer of oats. It was fed to live stock to a limited extent. If, therefore, the acreage under oats and barley has to be limited, and if wheat ceases to be grown, the land will have to go back to grass and if it does the grass will have to be eaten. That means there will have to be more cattle with a consequent increase in dairy cows to produce the extra cattle to eat the grass. As a result there will be a surplus of butter for export. The butter will have to be subsidised in order to be sold on a foreign market. How is that going to benefit this country, if we have to subsidise, in part, the butter that we send out to be eaten by the people across the way?

I want to say definitely that the farmer is a reasonable man. He is as ready as any man to take a reasonable percentage of profit and always has been. I think it should be said of him, in all fairness, that he is more ready than other sections of the community to take a reasonable profit on what he produces.

I would be as willing as anyone to agree to a reduction in the price of wheat if it could be established that there is a justification for it, or if production costs were to come down. In such circumstances I would be prepared, as a good Irishman and a good citizen, to make the best of this cut.

All those engaged in tillage had a bad time of it this year. It was not the wheat grower only who suffered. The oats and the barley were lost as well as the wheat. In fact, of all cereal crops the oats crop is the one that suffers most when there is bad weather such as we had this year. It is the worst register to heavy rain of all the cereal crops. The barley crop made a fair fight enough against the weather on certain land, and it is only certain land that is suitable for the growing of it. If we are importing oats to-day, that is due to a great extent to the fact that most of the oats crop was lost. The wheat crop stood up to the weather better than either oats or barley. Wheat will always make a great struggle when there is bad weather because it is the best crop with rice to take water.

I have not any political feeling about this question of wheat growing. There is nothing wrong, I think, in asking the Minister to reconsider the position. His action in reducing the price was, I think, ill-timed, and has struck a great blow against our farmers who are engaged in wheat growing. I think the Minister should be big enough to reconsider his decision. We are all human, the Minister and all of us. There is only the One who is infallible. No Minister of State is infallible. Therefore, I think that the Minister should be good enough and big enough to come back and reconsider his decision. We have tried to put the case for the motion fairly before the House and the Minister. There is nothing political about it, as far as we are concerned. I think that the Minister could very easily lighten the blow and should go a fair distance, if he is not prepared to go the whole way, in meeting the motion.

In normal times it would be easy for the Minister to say to the growers that they would have to take a bit of a cut. If the Minister made such a proposal, I think that the growers would be reasonable and fair-minded enough to sit around a table with him and his officials to discuss the pros and cons of the proposal. They might agree to have a cut operated on a sliding scale. I want to say, however, that the cut has been too harsh and that the time selected for the making of it was ill-chosen. There are a lot of people, I think, who would agree with me on that.

We do not want to make any political capital out of this. There will always be a necessity to grow wheat, no matter what Government is in office. Every good landowner has always grown it and will continue to do so. I should like to see a united Seanad behind the appeal which we are making to the Minister to reconsider his decision and see if it would be possible to alleviate the hardships which are bound to fall on the people concerned. They deserve every praise and encouragement we can give them, after the hard treatment they have experienced. It is encouragement they want; they do not want to try to sink on velvet.

I make this appeal in all sincerity to the Minister to be good enough to review the whole situation. He should discuss it with the people who are mainly concerned and work out something that there would be good will about. That would mean that wheat would continue to be national policy and not Party policy and those who produce the staff of life would be looked upon as they deserve to be looked upon.

This motion has been discussed for nearly 12 hours and yet I do not see any great enthusiasm from the Fianna Fáil Party for it. A similiar motion has gone through the Dáil already. If it had been discussed here first, I would see some reason in the long discussion. The most we can do would be to make recommendations to the Minister. As a farmer and wheat grower myself, in consultation with my farmer friends, I may say that before the harvest at all everyone had agreed —whether Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael or any other Party—that the price of wheat was going to come down. We expected maybe an easier cut, but felt it was inevitable that this should happen when Fianna Fáil agreed to take 270,000 tons from the wheat pool. They had a discussion themselves about it at Cabinet level and the Minister for Agriculture was directed more or less to reduce the acreage of wheat. Is not that a fact? It has not been denied; I have not heard it denied.

My friend from Limerick spoke about the growing of wheat there, but I remember that during the emergency when wheat was badly needed, resolutions came from Limerick imploring the Minister not to turn up the good land of Limerick for the growing of wheat.

That was from the area I referred to.

I am sorry, but I thought I remembered that.

And if there were an emergency to-morrow, you would have the same people asking the Minister not to turn up the land they wanted for racehorses.

I would like to make a few suggestions to the Minister and hope he will consider them. I suggest that the half-crown to be given the 1st December should be given on the 1st October. The wheat growers in my area do not hold the wheat. We have an early harvest. It is threshed in September or early October and they will not benefit this half-crown increase in December. I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary, who is here, to carry our views to the Minister and ask him if he can pay that half-crown on 1st October.

I am glad the Minister has stated his policy on barley and oats. I would impress on him the necessity for having the millers accept the barley when it is threshed. A few years ago, during the régime of Fianna Fáil the barley growers could not take the barley to the mills because it would not be accepted during the threshing period. I saw a notice on the mill doors that they were not accepting the barley, yet three or four months later those same millers were looking for licences to import barley. It has not happened this year alone: it has happened for several years.

I am also glad the Minister will make the oatmeal millers contract for their supply of oats and, if they do not do so, refuse them a licence to bring it in. It is very important that the market should be ready for the grower when he has his produce ready. I do not see any arguments put forward or any enthusiasm displayed by my friends across. As a matter of fact, at a meeting of the Cork County Committee of Agriculture last week, we had a motion put down by a very prominent supporter of that Party and before it was discussed he stood up and said he was withdrawing it. That happened last week in Cork. The motion was withdrawn and I am sure the reason was that they had no valid argument to put forward. The same thing applies here.

As a wheat grower myself, I say that probably we would like to get the best price we can, but we are not greedy and are prepared to accept the price that is obtaining at the time. I believe that next year the same number of farmers who grow wheat every year will continue to grow it. The speculator may be cut out, but he is no great loss. Coming up here to Dublin I could see the finest land more or less laid to waste. It will take years to bring it back into fertility again. Any man who grew wheat two or three times on the same land would see it was nearly barren.

It is time to conclude this motion. We have spent two days on it. Every argument has been put forward for and against and I think members of the House have made up their minds. As a farmer and wheat grower I am going to oppose it.

Apart from all that has been said about the exorbitant price of wheat, we should all be very thankful to God that somebody inspired the people to produce the wheat that was essential, particularly in a year like this when this country, like every country in Europe, is afflicted with the worst season in memory. We should be very thankful to God that the farmers—and even the despised conacre people—have stepped into the gap and produced the wheat that is essential.

We heard a lot about producing oats, barley and potatoes. We will have the result of all that in a month or two, when the potato crop is in. The country is in a very serious position. Similarly with barley. As Senator Hartney said, you would need to be lucky at a particular period to save barley without its being damp. I have plenty of experience of barley growing myself and I have known even dry areas where an excellent crop of barley would be spoiled simply because of what is known in the country as "September Fog", a heavy fog.

It should be the first duty of any Government to provide the needs of the people. That should come before strangers; it should come before bullocks or other animals. It should be the duty of the Government to provide the staple article of food. We are hanging by a hair, I might say, as the Leas-Chathaoirleach pointed out, with submarines and all the engines of destruction, atomic bombs and other bombs, and with transport as it is to-day. If disaster comes, it will come soon and sudden, when we will not be able to make any provision at all. Surely in a country like this we should ensure that we can meet the needs of our own people in the production of wheat?

It was pointed out also that in 1931 we had less than 21,000 acres of wheat. Had we in this particular year to purchase the needs of our people in wheat, what would it have cost the people? Certainly it would have cost not less than £14,000,000 to £16,000,000 to provide for the needs of our people in wheat alone. Is not that clear to everybody here? Where would $42,000,000 come from? Regardless of what Senator O'Brien said, is it not against all the ideas of economy in times such as these to bring wheat from 3,000 to 5,000 miles when there is no necessity for it and particularly when we have land that is at least two and a half times as good as the land in Canada, the United States, the Argentine or any of those other countries with which we are dealing?

If disaster happens it will come sudden and soon. What in the name of God is going to happen the people? Perhaps the young fellows upon whom we will depend for our bread will go into the British Army. Instead of providing for foreigners, is it not the first essential of any Government to at least look after the wheat needs of our own people?

I heard some Senators saying that because a guaranteed price was offered for wheat in 1948 the position was everything that could be desired. I can prove to those people that at that particular time the area under wheat went down by about 50 per cent. and the area under tillage generally went down by 25 per cent. as a result of the inadequate price that was offered to our people to produce it. On top of the blow that our people have got, the Government are now prepared to bring the position so far as wheat growing is concerned back to the position which obtained in 1931. That is the position we will find ourselves in if the Minister and his Party persist in their attitude towards the production of wheat.

There is not the shadow of a doubt that the soil of this country is as suitable as the soil in any other part of the world. Every country has its bad seasons. You have severe frosts and hurricanes and all the rest of it in various countries. Senator Hartney referred to the fact that we had a bad season in 1946 or 1947. You had another bad season when Fianna Fáil was in power. You had a bad season in 1954 to bring nemesis on Fine Gael. But is that why we should abandon the wheat-growing policy? Were it not for the encouragement and the subsidy given in regard to the growing of wheat, how would we stand with regard to neutrality? Regardless of all the theories of all the economists who spoke on this motion, how would we stand with regard to neutrality when the war broke out in 1939? What could we have done? What can we do if we are reckless enough now to leave the farmer in the hopeless position he is in after the year he has experienced?

I think Senator Burke pointed out that his wheat growing was in the main very successful, but I could bring the Minister, Senator Burke or anybody appointed by the Minister to the agricultural committees and agricultural societies all over the country and let them see the books of the farmers. After this year they will not get as much out of their wheat crops as will pay for the seeds and the manures in respect of which they had to borrow credit from the societies in order to produce the crops. The wheat they have delivered to the mill will not bring them £2 per barrel. That is the position, apart from the fact that the barley crop is gone, the oats crop is gone and now the potato crop is gone. What are we going to do with the tillage farmers in this country?

A lot of things were brought into this debate. For instance, there was the example of the red herring of the foreign ranchers which would not mislead a child. Are those people as numerous as the figures given in the other House and here would seem to suggest? The people in Tipperary, Kildare, Meath and Dublin would not represent one-seventh of the population of the whole wheat area. One-seventh is only two out of every 14 people. Are the remainder of the people going to suffer because of the neglect of the Land Commission? The Minister has regulations and officials enough to perform everything but miracles. Why does not the Minister for Lands get after those people? If the Minister is sincere in what he said, why does he not point those people out to us? I say that is not the position. It is simply a red herring drawn across the track. For instance, in Tipperary, Kilkenny and other counties I know the sons of the congests are in a miserable condition because their holdings are uneconomic. Why cannot those lands be acquired and given to those people to relieve congests in the country?

The Senator is wandering a bit.

I am not wandering too far, I submit. Neither do I want to wander. I would never have spoken were it not for the fact that this is a serious matter for the people down the country. The people who deal in conacre are the sons of congests. They cannot provide permanent maintenance for their families or occupations for them during the winter months. They would be of inestimable value to the nation. All this evidence will be found in the Credit Corporation in Dublin if the Minister wants to go to the trouble of finding it out. That is the position. Those are the people who are going to be affected by the cutting down price policy of the Minister for Agriculture.

Reference was also made here, particularly by some people who have not been in touch with the country, to the fact that, last year, our acreage of 490,000 acres of wheat was higher than we needed. Last year, we had an exceptional wheat yield. We had something like 23 cwt., or nine barrels to the acre. That was the first time in recorded history that we had such a high yield in this country. I am even doubtful if that yield occurred in England, where there is land similar to ours. Normally, and more or less consistently, the yield in this country is about seven barrels to the acre. That would leave you with about 3,500,000 barrels of wheat—just enough to give a barrel per head of our population all during the year, and everybody will agree we have been using more than that. I would point out that no provision has been made or included there for the seed, which would amount to about another 6,000 barrels. You would have to go to the foreigner to get that and you would have to find dollars to pay for it.

I am afraid that to appeal to the Minister at this stage is hopeless, but I earnestly appeal to him to delay this matter and get in touch with the societies all over the country. If he examines their books he will find evidence of the sorry plight of the farmers and he would be in a position to rectify the situation. It is in the interests of the country generally that the Minister should take that line.

Another matter that I could not understand at all was the new attack, launched by a combination of Parties on this occasion, on wheat-growing in this country. They certainly make strange bedfellows. Anybody who remembers, as I remember, what was preached and fought for by Pearse and Connolly must be very sad to-day in the light of this Government's attitude to home-grown wheat. When I read what Deputy Kyne, of Waterford, said in regard to the matter during the debate in the Dáil I felt he could not care less about our farmers. That is the position and I regret it very much.

In a month or two we shall be faced with a realisation of the gravity of the plight of our farmers, apart altogether from the position of the consuming public who will have to face a very lean time in the spring as far as the potato and other crops are concerned.

I am a farmer and I have personal experience of the conditions which prevail in my county. Were it not for the recent appalling weather conditions which we have experienced, I might have permitted this motion to go, with a considerable amount of enthusiasm, in view of the fact that members of the Government declared from the same platforms on which I stood with them that the cost of living must come down.

When Fianna Fáil first took office in 1932 they immediately hit the farmer and for years after that there were depressed conditions in the agricultural industry. It should not be necessary for me to remind Senators that Fianna Fáil started a racket so far as the cattle industry is concerned. We are still labouring under the effects of the self-same tariff on cattle. There has been no change in the differentiation against us by the cattledealers. That differentiation finds its way not only into the homes of comfortable farmers such as myself but into the homes of the humblest labourers.

I should like to tell the Government that, for one who has spent 40 years with them, it takes a very considerable grain of salt to help to digest the present position and I am only digesting it because I believe that, in order to bring down the cost of living, some sacrifice must be made. In this instance, the sacrifice is being made by the farming community. I trust that, when the next Budget is introduced, the various Parties will be enthusiastic as regards giving relief to farmers who are employing labour. I hope the farming community will be remembered in the next Budget and that it will be a sign that the end of their period of sacrifice has come.

Because of the disastrous harvesting season which we have just experienced, my conscience has troubled me very much on how I should vote on this motion or, indeed, on any similar motion. It is a lame excuse to say that the decision to cut the price of wheat was arrived at before it became evident that we should have a disastrous harvesting season. Please God, there are many years to come—years over which it would be possible and simpler and easier to carry out the policy the Minister is now implementing, and years in which the effects of that policy would prove less burdensome to the farming community than this year.

It is pitiful to travel through the County of Louth and to see fields under tillage so badly flooded. The position is so serious that our beet cannot be removed by horse labour. I have from 200 to 300 cattle, and we have to take some of the turnips out with buckets in order to feed them. Were it not that the cattle have to be fed, many men might be out of employment.

I have before me a news item which appeared two weeks ago in a newspaper. It refers to the agricultural position in England. It shows that England is not without her difficulties and it shows how she will solve them. We are informed that the new fixed price for milk in 1956-57 is 2/6 per gallon. For 1957-58 the price will be ?—compared with 2/7½ to-day. Therefore, it will take them three years to reduce the price of a gallon of milk by 2½d.

What we turn to after wheat is cattle. Next season, fat cattle per live hundredweight for England will be 113/6 compared with 113/9. The fixed price will come down 3d. a hundredweight per annum over three years. It would seem as if this young Parliament should look at what they call the Mother of Parliaments and see what a true mother she is.

I have as much experience of that branch of farming as any other, and I am aware of the difficulties. It is only natural that I must respect the various elements in my county which has two towns with 20,000 to 23,000 people and only 30 altogether in the agricultural part, in view of the fact that, for 30 years, they have given me the chair of the council and a seat on the council for 42 years. I must weigh these considerations very carefully. You cannot just take a buck jump at one of the main crops as the Government has done without bringing hardship which has sometimes been pointed out to me as being unchristian.

There is no use in a member here getting up and telling me that one man did not speak to him about the price of wheat. If he did not speak to him, then it was because he regarded him as being beyond being spoken to. That is the answer I make to that. I am voting against the motion for one reason, and one reason only, that I am elected as a member of the Government, and I am going to take the Minister for Agriculture at his word. Mind you, he is going to have a stiff task when he comes to deal with the millers. Forty years ago, I was secretary of a farmers' association. We came here to the then Minister—we came in two years to two different men —to get the price of barley improved. One of those men was David Barry and the other was T.W. Russell and, like now, they had their prejudices. They were pussy-foots, if you know what that happy phrase means, and they would do nothing for us.

When we went to the millers, they said to us: "Why don't you attack Guinness? Do you not see there in the City of Dublin what they have grown into over 50 years and they have taken a high percentage out of the County Louth and its growers". That can be dealt with and it is not that they gave me a second prize last week for my barley produced this year that prompts my sympathetic and admiring opinion of them—it is the fact that they consult so freely and so fully and meet the people so happily in relation to the price they are giving for barley. But remember that it is the slaves of Guinness amongst whom I was born— they are the people that made Guinness and not the investors. Hence, it is right to praise them here, but the millers are long ripe for nationalisation and you will not get on without it. You have nationalised your railways and you will not get any further until you have this nationalisation, but the Minister has given his word that he is moving and, on that ground, on behalf of the people of Louth, I am supporting him and on no other.

I think we should see some common sense from the entire inter-Party Government. My labourers have a bare £5 per week or thereabouts and I want to see the agricultural labourer's wage just as high as that of the 500 or 600 industrial workers in the companies for whom they work. I have seen them come and go, and when I go down to the factory a boy says to me: "I will go back to you outside if you will take me, because there is sweat here in the summer. If I could go back to you in the summer and back again to the factory in the winter, I would be all right" and when I ask what about the wages, he says: "These things are all very well, but if we get a fair crack in the country, we would nearly as soon have it". I have heard that half a dozen times or more from individuals, and how are we to satisfy our labourers with these cuts and buck jumps the Government are putting before us? How are we to do that, considering that Mr. Pollock, as a member of the Labour Party, said he wants £5 a week for all the labourers in the country— the very week this thing is announced?

The Minister for Agriculture spoke of justice. I would not occupy a position in public life for five minutes and I would not go out amongst my neighbours, relations and friends to auction thousands of acres of land, if I was not looking for justice, and I urge on the Parliamentary Secretary to-night that there is much that can be done. Surely the idea of giving these millers, as the Minister said, £1 for changing grain from one loft to another shows injustice, lack of consideration and lack of fair play. I want to say to the House that we are not going to make a success of Ireland with one political Party barking on one road because the other barked on the other. I am an old man, bordering on 70, and I have always seen this lack of consideration and fair play. I would say that this time we have got two knocks—we have the de Valera knock in regard to the cattle trade and now this Government come along with another knock which is much less but might achieve more. I pray the Government to examine their consciences very carefully because there are injustices. Let them continue to foster the happy outlook that was about to come over the rural community in the past five, ten or more years. Let them keep that going, if they can, and if there is a very big difference, surely some of it can stand a jolt.

We had here last night the Minister taunting one side about the £1 between the field and the floor of the mill and we had another speaker from the Fianna Fáil Benches showing the Minister a report of the Lavery Commission and asking him why he did not deal with it, once he set up the commission. I resent anybody saying to any member of the Labour Party that we are not standing four-square behind the farmers' claim to a decent profit on his labour, because we maintain and believe that the farmer and his wife and family are the hardest workers in the nation. We are standing four-square behind him all the time, but we say this, and believe it sincerely, that the millers and those who are handling the grain from the farmers should be dealt with before we talk about anything else.

I agree with Senator McGee in what he has said. He is a man who has experience of many aspects of life. There is no good in talking about injustice and reducing the price of wheat to the farmer without also taking complete control over the profits of the people handling the grain and turning it into flour. I suggest to Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil that they should not taunt each other about dealing with the findings of this commission. Both of them have avoided doing anything about it for one particular reason—that the vested interests are so powerful that both Parties are afraid to touch it. I think the time has arrived for this Government to deal with the millers and grain merchants who are dealing with the grain from the farmers to see that their profits are curtailed and to help the farmer to grow more wheat.

Many of the speeches made here were almost an incitement to the farmers not to grow wheat, even at 70/- per barrel. I have many friends in the farming community, and I have always heard that they get 15 barrels per acre.

To the Irish acre.

Also to a statute acre, I think they can get ten, 12, 13 and 14 barrels per acre. It costs £26 or £27 per acre to seed and manure it, £14 for machinery and for the labour of harvesting it. I was told that they had £27 10/- profit out of that. That works out very nearly to what Senator Burke said. I say, if the farmers are not paid sufficient, I do not expect them to grow wheat. It should be possible to have an agreement with the farmers, like the one the National Sugar Company has with the beet grower.

As one who has been brought up on a farm, I think there is not great employment in growing wheat. There is much more employment in mixed farming, that is, growing oats, barley and potatoes, with some wheat. I do not say that we are in the Labour Party do not stand for a decent price being paid to the farmers, but we want to see decent control.

I suggest to the Fine Gael and the Fianna Fáil parties that the report is there of Judge Lavery's Commission, and there are many ways of finding out what profits are made by the grain merchant in the handling of grain. A Senator referred to the handling of barley by the grain merchants. Of course that should not be allowed, because they want to depress the price of barley because they could get more profit out of wheat. This talk about growing wheat is only political propaganda, because the speeches in the Dáil and here were based on Party politics. That should not be the case.

We will have to agree that wheat has been well threshed here during the past two days. Listening to the case made by the movers of the motion, and also to the case made by the Minister for Agriculture, we will have to be satisfied with the fact that the best case was made by the Minister, and I think we will have to agree that the Government were right in the decision they took regarding the price of wheat.

Listening to my friend Senator McGee, and to the movers of this motion, we would think that all the farmers of this country were growing wheat, and that they were dependent upon wheat alone. We all know that is not the case. We know that less than 30,000 farmers out of roughly 350,000 in this country are growing wheat; this only amounts to round about 9 per cent. of the farmers.

I think we have to consider the land, the produce, and the product, and remember that those three go together. If they are properly associated, success will follow, and if they are not, then failure will follow. I think any of us, who knows anything about farming, will have to agree that they were not properly associated last year, and that last year we did not have a balanced agriculture. Our agricultural policy had become lop-sided, and if we continued to grow wheat then we would have been heading for national suicide. Last year, we had something like 491,000 acres under wheat, and if God in His wisdom had this year given us an ordinary good season we would have at least 400,000 tons of wheat.

The Fianna Fáil Party made an international agreement to purchase 270,000 tons of wheat, and that would leave us with roughly 670,000 tons. We would have an exportable surplus of roughly 220,000 tons of wheat. What did they expect us to do with that wheat? Did they consider the Irish taxpayer and the farmers in Mayo, Leitrim and in Cavan, who were not growing wheat, and the poor people of the City of Dublin, who were going to subsidise wheat production here to the tune of £9,000,000? Did they expect that we were going to export that wheat to England, and sell it at 50/-per barrel? I heard Senator Hartney stating: "Why not grow wheat and feed it to our pigs and cattle?"

Would Senator Hartney expect us to rear our pigs and cattle, and then export them to Britain, and get the Irish taxpayer to pay a subsidy of £9,000,000? I would like to know is that Fianna Fáil policy, and is that Party standing behind that policy, because I remember —it is not so long ago—that they told us that the British market was gone, and gone forever, thanks be to God. Now do they want us to feed their wheat to cattle and export them over to that market? We know that last year, a man in this country increased his wheat acreage from 100 to 1,000, and we know that any man growing that amount could not farm his land properly, no matter what anybody says here, and I know as much about farming and about wheat growing as anybody.

I was reared on a small farm on which I had to work when I was 14 or 15 years of age. I know that wheat is harder on land than any other crop, and if you let out land after wheat, your land will not be nearly as good. Wheat depletes the fertility of the soil of this country, and we should be jealous of guarding that fertility, because it is our national asset, and the only thing upon which we can depend. We have no underground wealth like other countries. We have 12,000,000 acres of arable soil, and the standard of living of all sections of the community depends upon what the farmer gets from these 12,000,000 acres. Therefore, we should guard the fertility of the soil, and so have a balanced farming policy in this country. We should have rotational cropping, which would definitely retain the fertility of the soil, and if the farmers in this country worked their land properly they should leave the land in the autumn at least in as good heart, if not better, than they found it in the spring so that when they are leaving their farms to their sons, or to whoever they are leaving them, they will leave the land in as good a heart, if not better, than they found it.

Last year certain people were trying to buy up land and were prepared to grow four or five crops of wheat on it, and then were prepared to leave the land thereafter, because they could not make enough profit, if they kept it for three or four years. Senator Kissane said to-day that he agreed with the Minister that the area under oats, barley and potatoes should be increased, and that we should still get the same amount of wheat. I wonder how did they intend to carry on that policy, because I remember one time, when that party was in power, seeing cartloads of oats in Mullingar selling at 6/- per barrel, and not a single person to buy them.

He also stated that, if the Minister gave a guaranteed price for oats and barley, speculators could come in and make a fortune out of it as they had done in the case of wheat. The Minister stated yesterday that he was getting Guinness's and the millers to make agreements with those people to grow barley and oats. As a farmer, I claim that to be a good policy. It is bad, economically, for this country to have a surplus of wheat and to see the Minister obliged to give licences for the import of barley and oats.

Senator Kissane also stated that wheat was subsidised in America. I would ask him to remember that they can subsidise agricultural production in America and England because both are large industrial countries, but here, if we subsidise any agricultural product, we are only feeding the dog with a bit of his own tail.

Last year the number of our cattle increased by 64,900, while the area under root and grain crops went down by 15,400 acres. The area under hay went down by 47,900 acres. Is that not altogether wrong? Is there any Senator on the other side of the House who would say that is good farming for the country?

We all know that the land of Ireland belongs to the farmers, who have their rights and also their duties. The rights of man have always been accepted as sacred in this country. The farmers, as I have said, have their rights, and if we were to try to build the country on rights alone I think it would lead not to peace and prosperity but to conflict, chaos and disintegration in the long run. If we are to choose between rights and duty, I think we should definitely choose the latter, because it will provide the best foundation on which to build the country.

The present Government do not want to interfere in any way with the rights of the farmer. They do not want to go back to compulsion; they do not want to fill the farmer's fields with inspectors and neither do they want to tuck in tractors over the farmer's land and use compulsion against him. But they have definitely reduced the price of wheat to what they think is an economic figure, one that will give the farmer and those depending on him a fair living. They want to encourage the farmers, in their own interest and in the interests of the country, to change over from the growing of wheat —to grow less wheat and more oats and barley.

Unfortunately, we here usually think of what we should get and seldom of what we should give. Remember, it is by giving alone that a country is built up and not by getting. Therefore, when this Government were fixing the price of wheat they had to bear in mind their overall responsibility to all sections of the community. It is the duty of any Government to hold the scales as evenly as they can between the farmers and the people living in the towns and cities—the consumers. We all know that the level of taxation at the present time is pressing heavily on all sections of the community. If burdens have to be shouldered at certain times, then I claim that they should be spread fairly and squarely over all sections of the community and not placed on one particular section.

I stated before that we have 12,000,000 acres of arable land. This year we had 500,000 acres under wheat. That cost something like £9,000,000 by way of subsidy, so that the people who are farming the other 11,500,000 acres —the 320,000 odd farmers who did not grow wheat—had to contribute to the payment of that subsidy. I suggest to the House that the balanced agricultural policy enunciated by the late Deputy Patrick Hogan, our first Minister for Agriculture, "of one more cow, one more sow and one more acre under the plough", would be far better for this country than this policy of growing too much wheat and of expecting the taxpayer to subsidise it to the tune of £9,000,000. As regards the wheat itself, I have some figures here. In 1947, the average yield per acre in this country was only 2.5 barrels which at 57/6 per barrel gave the farmer roughly £7 per acre. In 1948, the average for the whole country was 4.92 barrels per acre. The price paid that year was 62/6 per barrel, so that the farmer got roughly £15 10s. per acre. In 1953 the average yield was 7.38 barrels per acre, the farmer getting £4 per barrel which was roughly £29 5s. per acre for the whole country. If in 1955, the farmer produced an extra barrel to the acre at 70/- per barrel it would bring the yield up to 8.38 barrels per acre, and would leave him with an income of £29 6s. per acre or 6/- more than in 1953. I claim that if wheat is grown on good land, on the land on which it should be grown and by farmers who understand proper farming methods and according to a proper rotation, it will still pay.

Will the Senator give the figures for 1951?

Unfortunately, I have not got the figures here. I took the figures for the three years which I have given.

That is a pity.

I can tell some of the Fianna Fáil Senators who, when speaking in support of the motion, said that the Minister for Agriculture and the Government were against wheat growing, that when the present Minister and this Government got into power in 1948 they increased the price of wheat by 5/- per barrel.

That is not true.

It is true.

It is clearly not true.

I would like to have it placed on the records of the House that the price of wheat in 1948 was determined in November of 1947.

Does the Senator mean to tell me that the Government fixed a price in November, 1947, for wheat which was not to be sown until the following November?

That was the price fixed for the following year.

The election took place in November.

It did not.

The election has nothing whatever to do with the fixing of the price of wheat.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Senator L'Estrange should be allowed to keep to the motion.

I think Senator O'Brien made a very good point last night when he said that there should not be a war-time price for wheat in peace-time. Every other section of the community has to compete with world prices. I do not say we should ask the farmers to do that but I think the Government is treating them fairly and justly. The Seanad should approve of the action of the Government and reject the motion. Those opposite would nearly claim that no one is interested in the farmer but themselves. Going back to 1932, history does not prove that.

We will go back to 1932 if you wish.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Senators will have to cease this cross-fire and address the Chair.

The action of the Government has been taken in the best interest of the community as a whole and they are prepared to do their duty. We know that no Government can please all the people all the time but I think that what they have done has been in the best interests of the country and I for one will vote for them.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Senator Cogan to conclude.

It is my first duty to congratulate Senator McGee on the courage, the sincerity and the soundness of the views he expressed. They are the views I would expect from a public representative living and working in the great tillage County of Louth. They are also the views I would expect from the chairman of the Louth County Committee of Agriculture, which I understand passed a resolution unanimously condemning this foul injustice on the wheat growers. I do not agree with one remark he passed—it is rather a contentious matter, but I cannot allow it to pass —when he said that Fianna Fáil made an attack on the cattle trade. That attack was made by an alien Government at the urgent request of the Fine Gael Party. That is on record.

What did you say about that when you were talking about Fianna Fáil all over the country?

The kernel of the case made by the Government Parties for this reduction in the price of wheat is that there was a danger of over-production. That was stressed by the Minister and by each successive speaker as the justification for this foul injustice. That is the case which I am going now to tear into shreds.

There is no danger whatever in the coming year—and we are dealing in this motion with the coming year only —of over-production, regardless of what price might be given. Even if the Government decided to give the Irish farmer the price that the Turkish Government is paying to the Turks for growing wheat, £5 13s. 4d., you would not get a sufficient acreage in the coming year to exceed our requirements. We have to face realities.

We are at the very eve of Christmas; 1954 will, I hope, be remembered forever as the year of the long harvest. It started in the middle of August and is still going on. I see many stacks of corn floating in the water, and in some land that is not flooded they are saturated with water and are almost a complete loss. It has been a terrible year. Many thousands of acres not flooded by the overflowing of our rivers are still in such a way that it is impossible for man or horse to walk on them. Senator McGee said, I think, that it is necessary to take the root crop from the fields to feed live stock and carry it in buckets. Imagine anyone suggesting it would be possible to go on that land and start ploughing and increased acreage for wheat. That is absurd and ridiculous. There is no danger in the coming 12 months of an excessive acreage being grown, there is no danger of anything like the acreage grown this year.

Remember that in this year now drawing to a close the situation was abnormal. We were following a year when wheat growing had been very successful. Nineteen hundred and fifty three was the most successful year on record. We had uncertainty in regard to the cattle trade which more or less drove farmers to change over to an increased acreage of wheat. Those urgent incentives do not exist to-day, so there is no foundation for the suggestion that we will be over-produced in the matter of wheat. Then there is reference to the possibility of this country being forced to accept 200,000 tons of wheat from abroad. What are the facts? The Fianna Fáil Government in 1953 and their predecessors in 1950—and I think the previous Fianna Fáil Government —had to agree to an arrangement by which in certain circumstances they would take a certain quantity of wheat from the wheat producing countries. They had to enter into that agreement in order to secure a certain amount of wheat, in order to ensure that our needs would be supplied. There was no alternative.

That arrangement provided that if the wheat importing country offered a certain maximum price, the exporting countries would be forced to supply it, whether they liked it or not; and if the exporting countries offered us wheat at a certain minimum price then we would have to accept it. There is very little possibility that the exporting countries will lower the price so low that they will compel us to accept it. That is generally agreed. Even if they did—and I think the lowest price for Australian wheat would be about £26 a ton—and if we were compelled to accept wheat at £26, it would be fairly good value even as a foodstuff, considering we are importing very inferior barley at up to £30 a ton. This scare that there is a danger of over-production, a danger of a glut or surplus, a danger of our having to export wheat to markets that do not require it, is simply a false alarm, a false case made in order to slash the price. Senator McGee was right when he said there is a demand for a reduction in the cost of living, an urgent demand. The cost of living has risen during the past six months and is still rising and the Government has decided that the only victim they can select, the victim not likely to strike back, is the unfortunate farmer. They have singled out one particular section of the farming community—a very large section, the wheat growers—for a special attack in order that they can claim, as Senator McGee suggested, that they will bring down the cost of living. They have not indicated, however, that this £1,000,000 or £2,000,000 that is to be taken from the wheat growers will be passed on to the consumers of bread.

The Minister for Agriculture was, perhaps, modest, as usual, when he stated that the speech he delivered in this House was simply a rehash of what he said in the Dáil. He appears to have been particularly proud of his pronouncement in the Dáil because, at public expense, he caused a copy of it to be sent to every county committee of agriculture in the Irish Republic. He may have considered that it had a good educational value. I am not sure under what particular sub-head of the Department of Agriculture that expense was incurred but anyhow he seems to have been quite proud of his public pronouncement on the wheat question. He is ensuring that it will get into the hands of every member of every county committee throughout the length and breadth of the State. He is not quite so proud of his address to this House as he stated that he is not sending it to the county committees. That is rather strange because one of the remarkable features of his speech was that he complimented in very striking terms Senator O'Brien for his contribution to the debate. In all courtesy to Senator O'Brien and considering he made such a wonderful contribution to this debate, I think it would have been right and proper that the Minister should also have ensured that that would reach the county committees of agriculture.

But the Minister went further than that and said he endorsed without qualification or reservation the statement made by Senator O'Brien. He said that if anybody did not like that he could lump it. I do not know what particular section of the inter-Party Government he was referring to when he made that statement because the views expressed by Senator O'Brien are worthy of note at the present time. Senator O'Brien did not justify the cut in the price of wheat on the ground that there was a danger of a surplus. He did not seek to claim that the present Government were all out for wheat growing but that they were only worried about certain abuses. He went much further and said that the policy should be to end wheat growing lock, stock and barrel.

Senator O'Brien said that the policy should be to end wheat growing lock, stock and barrel?

Yes, by subsidy.

Let us get this clear——

Senator O'Brien never used those words. They could not possibly be used by any lucid professor.

He said you should not continue a war-time policy in peace-time.

That an end should be made of wheat, lock, stock and barrel, ending the sentence anyway you like! He never said it.

He said that the policy of subsidisation of cereal crops should be ended.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

We cannot have a discussion on Senator O'Brien's speech.

I did not purport to quote Senator O'Brien.

That is all right.

Senator O'Brien made a long speech. I have the substance of it in a few words and the substance of his address was that all subsidisation of wheat should end; that it was bad policy; that he condemned it in 1927 and that he still adheres to that view. He referred the movers of this motion to a commission that was set up in 1928 to inquire into the growing of wheat. He referred the movers of the motion to the recommendations of that commission and said that he stood over the recommendations of that commission. The Minister for Agriculture publicly endorsed that statement. He agreed and approved of everything that Senator O'Brien said. We had the Minister for Agriculture who, with the concurrence of the other members of the Government, shapes agricultural policy, adhering to the recommendations made in 1928 that wheat growing should not, under any circumstances, be subsidised.

Senator O'Brien referred me to the points that were made against wheat growing in 1928 by that committee. Here is the report. It is the Economic Committee, 1928, Reports on Wheat Growing, etc., 1929. Let me quote one of the recommendations of that committee on page 11, paragraph 8:—

"There is, as yet, no really prolific variety of spring wheat suitable for cultivation in this country."

That is one of the grounds upon which the committee decided against wheat growing at that time. We know that in the last 27 years a good deal of water has flown under the bridges and, perhaps, a good deal of water has flown over them too but many changes have taken place in the technique of wheat growing. Now there is very little winter wheat growing. There is practically 100 per cent. spring wheat. We have evolved over the years very satisfactory spring wheats so that the whole case made at that time against wheat growing falls completely to the ground. Other points made were that the wheat was too long in the ground, that it was subject to damage in the winter months and that it was altogether an uneconomic crop. We have advanced very far since that report was issued in 1928 but apparently the man who shapes agricultural policy in this country has not advanced one inch since 1928. He is back to the old Cumann na nGaedheal policy of depending entirely on the ships of a foreign nation to bring in our food supplies from outside the country and making ourselves absolutely and completely dependent upon the goodwill of other nations for our existence. That is the Cumann na nGaedheal policy of 1928.

"One more acre under the plough." Let the Senator not forget that.

That is the Cumann na nGaedheal policy as expressed in this report which the Minister for Agriculture asks us all to read and endorse.

That is not a pronouncement of Cumann na nGaedheal policy. It is the report of a commission. Let the Senator not distort the facts.

This is a report of a committee which the Fine Gael Minister for Agriculture publicly endorsed in this House yesterday. Therefore, Fine Gael are committed to it, whether they like it or not and the Parties associated with Fine Gael are also committed to it. Remember, it was only a majority report. Even at that time there were many people who did not agree with the policy of making this country utterly and completely dependent upon outside nations. The committee consisted of 12 members. Seven supported the majority report but five brought in minority reports diametrically opposed to the recommendations of that committee. It is worth noting the names of the five persons who opposed the majority report. Who constituted the minority at that time? Who stood out for a national policy in regard to wheat? The names of the five persons are: Éamon de Valera, Séamus Ó Riain, Seán Lemass, Thomas Kennedy and Richard Anthony—three members of the Fianna Fáil Party and two members of the Labour Party. At that time, Fianna Fáil and Labour were linked together in support of a national economic policy. I wonder how far the Labour Party have travelled since the day this report was signed on their behalf?

May we take it that you were against a national economic policy at that time, as you were then an opponent of Fianna Fáil?

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Senator L'Estrange should address the Chair.

Would Senator Cogan now come to the price of wheat?

The Parliamentary Secretary should not interfere in matters which concern the Chair.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

The Chair is aware that, during the debate, there was emphasis on the importance of this report. Consequently, Senator Cogan is in order in referring to it.

Is a member of the other House entitled to raise points of order in this House? I understand he is not.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Senator Cogan on the motion.

I have now shown that the attack which has been made upon the wheat growers is not inspired by the motives which have been given to the people. As I have pointed out, there is no danger of over-production. The whole motive behind this slashing of the price of wheat is an endeavour to drive the farmers out of wheat growing—an endeavour to drive them back to the policy that was advocated by the Cumann na nGaedheal Government as far back as 27 years ago and which has been repeatedly advocated since then by the present Minister for Agriculture.

In the course of his contribution to this debate, the Minister twitted me with not having produced to this House comparative figures showing the prices paid to the wheat growers in European countries. We farmers are being attacked on the ground that we are demanding an excessive price for our wheat, that we are demanding a price that cannot be justified. Let us take Turkey as an example. The price for the coming year has already been announced there and that price is £5 13s. 9d. per barrel of wheat as against £3 7s. 6d. in the Republic of Ireland. I know that the Turk is a very decent man, but why is it that he is entitled to so much more for his barrel of wheat than the Irish farmer? It may be that he does not get as high a yield per acre. However, in making this point, the Minister did not mention the relative costs of production. Maybe the Turkish farmer has not to use as much fertiliser on his land as the Irish farmer has: maybe, because of the climate there, the amount of labour involved in the saving of the crop is not as great as is involved in Ireland. Let us now consider the position in France. I suppose that France is more comparable to the Irish Republic for this purpose than Turkey. In France, the guaranteed price for wheat for the coming year is £5 7s. 11d. per barrel as against £3 7s. 6d. here. I was always led to believe that the standard of living amongst the working farmers of France is not remarkably high.

Would I be entitled, through the Chair, to ask Senator Cogan to state how many barrels per acre they are growing in France? He is making a comparison with the standard of living in France. If the Irish farmer produces considerably more barrels per acre, at a lower price, than the French farmer then it can be argued that our standard of living is higher than that of the French farmer. The return by way of money per acre is much higher here than it is either in France or Turkey. That is the point.

My information is that the French farmers are very good. They carry on a good system of mixed farming—a system of fairly intensive cultivation accompanied by fairly intensive stock-raising. Their land is, therefore, relatively good. Remember that our yields are nothing to boast about. There are exceptional cases such as Senator Burke's own case, which he mentioned. However, taking an average for the whole country, we have not anything like such a wonderful yield as was suggested in the other House by the Minister for Agriculture. Here are particulars of the average amounts of millable wheat per acre supplied to the mills over a certain number of years. These are official figures which are relatively accurate because they are not the yield but the actual amounts sent into the mills, which would be almost 100 per cent. of the actual yield. There would be a deduction, perhaps, for the assembly of seed but the figures would represent almost 100 per cent. of the total yields.

In 1949 we supplied to the mills an average of 6.7 barrels per statute acre. In 1950 we supplied 5.6 barrels per statute acre. In 1951 we supplied 5.3 barrels per statute acre. In 1952, we supplied 6.2 barrels per statute acre and in 1953 we supplied 7.3 barrels per statute acre. Even at £4 per barrel, which was the average price paid over the past two years, 7.3 barrels per statute acre would not provide such an enormous gross income to the farmer. Even assuming that 7.3 barrels do not represent the entire output— because there might be a certain amount for seed—even assuming that the yield per acre was eight barrels in the year 1953, that represents £32 and that is the gross income on the average acre of wheat here—the gross income, out of which all the expenditure in relation to production has to be taken.

As I said when introducing this motion, various figures have been given as to the costs of production, but I think they cannot be less, in the main, than £25 per statute acre. Therefore, it will be seen that there was not very much of a margin to the ordinary farmer in the growing of wheat. Of course, there are exceptional cases such as the figures which Senator Burke quoted in relation to his own farm. Personally, I am not in favour of members of the Oireachtas bringing into debates particulars concerning their own business activities because it is impossible to check on the figures and it would be discourteous even to question them. But those are exceptional figures.

I am prepared to allow these figures to be audited by any reputable firm of chartered accountants.

Supposing every other Senator produces figures, are they going to be audited, too? Where is it to end then?

I think it is not a very desirable practice, although I am accepting his figures as being absolutely correct in his own case, because when you are dealing with average yields, you have to take the exceptionally low and the exceptionally high yield, and the yields mentioned by Senator Burke were exceptionally high, very much above the average, the proved average which I have quoted.

There is, however, another point that must have struck some Senators when they heard the figures: his remarkably low expenditure on fertilisers. I think he mentioned a figure of something like £4 or £3 per acre—I have not got it here now—for fertilisers. He will correct me if I am wrong. That is a remarkably low figure. In Wicklow, I know that we have to spend up to about £8 an acre on fertilisers in order to get a reasonably good crop.

I think the land in question must have been exceptionally rich and I want to say, in passing, that many years ago I travelled through County Tipperary in the month of January, and I was impressed by the appearance of fertility that was so obvious there. Compared even with our Carlow land, it appeared to be very much superior. That was an impression gained by merely judging the land as I passed through at a time when vegetation is at its lowest stage. I think I may say that in the Clonmel district and in the whole County of Tipperary, we have perhaps the best land in Ireland and I say that the yields he mentioned, together with the cost and quantity of fertilisers used, are exceptional. The amount of fertiliser required was abnormally low and the yield very high.

You cannot base the case for a reduction in the price of any commodity upon an exceptional yield. We all know that the law of averages is a hard law, and perhaps in some ways not altogether a fair law, but it is the only law you can observe in connection with a matter of this kind. According to the law of averages and on the average yield per acre, the profits were low over an average of the last five years. They might have been relatively good in 1953, but you must, in dealing with an agricultural crop or with any type of agricultural production, take a cycle of at least five years. As we know, usually in every five-year period, you get one exceptionally bad year. This year has been an exceptionally bad year for farmers; 1950 was a rather difficult and wet harvest; 1946 was also an exceptionally bad harvest; and 1942, I think, was also very bad, so that, in every period of five years, we have at least one very bad year, and you cannot calculate the profit on the growing of any crop without taking a cycle of at least five years. On that basis, there was no justification whatever for this reduction.

The Minister, in defending this cut, suggested that he had alternatives to offer to the wheat growers. As he said some time ago:—

"Walk with me and I will dazzle you with prosperity,"

so he said to the wheat growers:—

"Walk with me and I will ensure a minimum price of £2 per barrel for every barrel of feeding barley grown."

He walked you, anyway.

He said again:—

"Walk with me and I will ensure that the millers will be compelled to enter into contracts with the growers of oats to pay them a certain fixed price."

I wonder how much reliance can we place upon those promises? In regard to barley, the minimum price he has announced is a very low one. It is probably one that, in present circumstances, could be carried out, but the announcement of that minimum price has come at a very inopportune time, because I understand that the growers of malting barley are at present negotiating with Messrs. Guinness to secure the best price they can for their malting barley and the Minister has provided Messrs. Guinness with a weapon with which to strike those growers in their negotiations when they tell them that the price of feeding barley has been fixed at 40/- per barrel.

On a point of order, the Minister stated that the minimum price was £2 and he hoped that the farmers would get as much as they liked after that.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

That is not a point of order. It is a point of correction.

In this country, minimum prices have a habit of becoming maximum prices in very many cases.

In regard to oats, there is a very large measure of vagueness in the promise the Minister has given and I would advise people like Senator McGee and others interested in this matter to insist that the vagueness shall be removed, because we have very vivid recollections of similar promises being made to oat growers in the past.

We remember the ungodly mess the Minister made of oats in 1948, when he induced all and sundry to go out and grow the maximum acreage, and, when they had it grown, told them, in the first place, that he was importing unlimited quantities of maize at £1 per cwt. and, secondly, that if they did not like the price they were getting for their oats, they could feed it to the hens. Have we any certainty that the Minister will not slip quietly out of this vague promise which he has given to the oat growers, just as he has slipped out of the very definite promise he and his colleagues gave to the wheat growers this year when they guaranteed that the price would be maintained for five years? Have we any guarantee that the Minister will not slip out of this vague promise just as readily as he slipped out of the very definite promise which he gave to the egg producers in 1948, when he told them that the more eggs they produced the higher would be the price, and sent a letter to almost every woman in Ireland, with his photo attached to make sure that it would be accepted as absolutely true?

And the price did not drop until your Government got in.

And the price was reduced by 6d. in less than a year and by 1/- six months later.

In 1952, it was reduced—not in the Minister's time.

It was reduced in 1949.

Your memory must be wrong.

Well, give the truth anyway.

I object very strongly a Chathaoirleach, to the charge of falsehood. I have a very distinct recollection of the matters to which I am referring, because I raised this matter in the Dáil, and I even produced this famous circular, when the price was reduced in the following year, after that promise had been given. I am only mentioning this in passing, just to show that even very clear cut and definite promises are very often broken by the same Minister and by the same Government. I am going to appeal to this House to accept the motion, particularly in view of the earnest appeal made by Senator McGee.

It is very serious to strike at an important industry like wheat growing. It took years to build up the tradition of wheat growing in this country. In the six years prior to the war we had only got as far as 250,000 acres under a subsidised and guaranteed price. We were moving steadily forward. Then came the war, which to a certain extent gave a set-back to wheat growing, because it meant that wheat had to be grown under compulsion. There was a good deal of talk about compulsion in regard to wheat growing. It was mentioned in this debate several times that the last Government introduced compulsory wheat growing during the war period. But if they introduced it, it was done with the unanimous support of every political Party in Dáil Éireann, including even the Independents, of which group I was a member. Fine Gael were also committed to that policy of compulsion; so were the Labour Party, and they rightly adopted that policy, because without wheat we could not have survived. It is worthy of note that this committee which inquired into wheat-growing in 1927 referred to the possibility of completely cutting off imported wheat. That committee lightly brushed it aside by saying that, if there were a complete cutting-off of wheat supplies, we could just do without it; we would have plenty of oats, potatoes, vegetables and meat——

And free beef.

And that we could do without wheat. I ask the House, does anyone, in the light of their experience in the past few years, endorse that view? Is it not clear that a complete cutting-off of our bread supply during the war would have created a very dangerous situation? Pressure would have been brought to bear upon this country to take a stand which the lawfully elected Government did not want to take.

It seems to me that the whole driving motive behind this campaign of eliminating wheat in our economy is inspired by a desire to make this country subservient to an outside power. This anti-wheat campaign is anti-national in its basis and inspiration. I do not, of course, associate Senator O'Brien with that view. He probably adopts this anti-wheat attitude from economic motives, inspired by the old free trade ideas. As far as the present Minister and the others are concerned, I would say the opposition to wheat is opposition to economic independence, and to the political independence of this State. For that reason I appeal to the House to adopt this motion.

The country has reacted very badly to this attack on the farmers. The farmers, perhaps, are as temperamental as anybody else. They can take hard blows but, when they are confronted with a combination of disasters, they are inclined to be very embittered in regard to any attack on their rights. This slashing of the price of wheat is a knife thrust, not only at the farming community but at the nation itself. One of its effects may be to dishearten and discourage the grand spirit which was growing up in agriculture over the last five years. The young men who are the life and soul of any industry and who are the life and soul of agriculture were beginning to feel confident. That development was also due to the fact that there had been a certain measure of stability in agriculture over the past six or seven years. Young farmers were beginning to feel confident and were putting all their energies, thoughts and intellect into developing that industry and making it more efficient. I see that development is now going to be set aside. Are the young farmers to feel embittered and to feel that every hand is being raised against them? Are they to feel that they are going to be singled out as the first people who ought to be attacked when money is required to meet commitments to civil servants, or any other section of the community?

I was reading the official organ of Macra na Feirme, and I noticed a cartoon in which the wheat grower was represented as a poor man who was being knocked down by the weather conditions and who was being kicked on the ground by the Minister, while other bodies were making their excessive demands for increased remuneration.

The spirit of bitterness against the farmers will act as a setback to the mood of enterprise that had been so noticeable in recent years. In addition, many farmers, feeling that there was security in regard to at least two crops, beet and wheat, had invested a good deal of their savings, or even borrowed money, in order to make their farms more modern and up-to-date. These people will feel very embittered when they have to meet their commitments out of the reduced price paid for their crops. I think, therefore, that it is in the interests of sound agricultural policy that the wheat price should be preserved, at least for another year. When introducing this motion I stated there was a possibility that a strong unpolitical farmers' union would be formed during next year. Let us wait until this happens and let the Government meet that union and thrash out all the issues in regard to wheat prices.

Let us postpone this cut for at least one year. It is a moderate and a modest demand. To emphasise how strongly feeling has reacted against this cut in the price of wheat I want to draw attention to what happened at a meeting of the local authority of which I am a member, the Carlow County Council. There, a resolution was passed unanimously condemning the cut in the price of wheat. It was passed unanimously, notwithstanding the fact that a member of the Fine Gael Party in Dáil Éireann was present at the meeting. That seems to indicate that the farmer-members of Fine Gael while they must, I suppose, vote for this cut in Dáil Éireann or perhaps in this House, feel that their conscience compels them to vote against it at a local authority meeting.

We will always vote according to our conscience.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

I would remind Senator L'Estrange that Senators should address the Chair. There is a high tradition of debate in this House and I would ask the Senator to respect that tradition.

I feel that the member of Dáil Éireann to whom I have referred would not have acted in that way if he did not feel very strongly on the subject, and I am quite sure that neither would Senator McGee have spoken in this House in the manner in which he did if he did not feel very strongly.

Meetings of farmers have been organised throughout the country. They have been organised in protest against this reduction in price, and almost invariably they have been organised by the supporters of Fine Gael. That shows that there is a general acceptance of the view that the Government have acted wrongly and unjustly in this matter. They have made a mistake, and if they are big enough to remedy it now their prestige, I think, will rise in the eyes of the people, but if they adhere doggedly to the decision which they have taken I believe that the people will condemn them.

There are a few other matters in connection with this proposed price fixation at the present time with which I did not deal when introducing the motion. The Minister, in making this reduction, announced a new scheme of payment, described now by many farmers as the "Dillon Plan". The Dillon Plan consists of paying the farmer an additional 2/6 for holding his wheat until December. In a normal year, wheat is cut, in the main, early in September and some of it, perhaps, in August. The majority of farmers, large and small, are going over to the combine. It is untrue to say that the combine can only be used on very large farms. It can be used on small farms, and used efficiently. It is the logical and the efficient way of dealing with wheat or any cereal crop in this State. If a crop of wheat is harvested in August or early September, is it not absurd to propose that a farmer should endeavour to hold it in the sack or spread on his loft until December? If he does, it is certain to deteriorate rapidly.

Green wheat does not hold after threshing unless it is dried within a very short time. If the suggestion in this changed system is that the farmer should scrap the combine and go back to the reaper and binder or to the old mowing machine or, as the Minister for Defence suggested, that he should go back to the scythe—if that is the suggestion which the Government are putting forward, is it not one which ought to be treated with ridicule by anyone who knows anything about agricultural conditions? At one time the Minister for Agriculture threatened farmers that he would like to send to prison any man who was using horses for the purpose of cultivating his land. Now, it appears he is introducing a scheme not to send a man to prison but to execute him if he uses a combine.

I think we ought to be realistic in matters of this kind. Young farmers in this State to-day are not going to go back to the scythe or to the old mowing machine, with a reaping attachment. Neither are they going to go back to the old reaper and binder. These are outdated methods of harvesting. The modern and the more efficient method is to get the grain separated from the straw as quickly as possible and get it dried immediately but the Minister, apparently, wishes, in this respect, to put back the hands of the clock and to adopt the old-fashioned and out-of-date methods of harvesting.

Senators should remember that, in this present year, there were greater losses sustained by those farmers who adhered to the old methods than there were by those who adopted the combine harvester. Corn was lost in the stook and it was lost in the stack. Losses were sustained during the downpours of rain which we experienced over the last three months. I suggest that the Minister's scheme will not work. It only angers the farmers, and to mention it only adds insult to injury so far as the reduction in the price of wheat is concerned.

Lastly, I would say that there is something utterly illogical and utterly stupid in the outlook of those public representatives who have sought to defend this slashing of the farmer's income by suggesting that two or three per cent. of the wheat grown here is grown under unsatisfactory and undesirable conditions. Why punish the small farmer, or the man who is working his land efficiently and growing his wheat under a proper system of rotation, because an abuse is committed by one or two per cent. of wheat growers? That is a question which no one on the Government side can answer. The Minister is penalising the efficient farmer for the crime or the offence of the inefficient.

Wheat grown efficiently, in proper rotation, improves the land because it gives an incentive to the farmer who might have an excessive acreage of old pasture to break up that land and put it under a proper rotation. The wheat policy gives bone and strength to a tillage policy. So long as one crop is secure in the matter of price, the farmer can then adopt a tillage programme of growing crops within proper rotation. That is what 95 per cent. of our farmers are doing. The other 5 per cent. perhaps, may be growing wheat on the same land in successive years, but why punish the efficient farmers because of this abuse? It can be corrected much more efficiently by the method which I suggested when introducing the motion. Cutting the price will not end the abuse. If it continues —it may not continue after this year, because of the weather conditions—the only way to end it is to have wheat grown under contract, as is suggested for oats in the coming year and as is adopted for malting barley.

Only a limited acreage of malting barley is required by the brewery and distilling interests. Up to this year they have been prepared to pay a fair price for a limited acreage, but although they are paying a good price, a much better one than we have been paying for wheat, the acreage is never excessive because it is controlled by the contract system. In the same way, although the Sugar Company has met farmers in a reasonable way and on their increased costs has paid them an increased price each year, the acreage of sugar beet grown has never exceeded the demand, because it is grown in an organised rational way under contract. The Minister has announced that he will get oats grown next year in the same manner if necessary. If it is necessary to have an acreage of wheat grown under contract, there is no need for the Minister to suggest, as he did, that the only alternative to reducing the price was to send in an army of inspectors on the farms. That is not a logical or sensible solution to the problem.

Wheat can be grown in a rational way. The former Minister for Agriculture suggested that our requirements were in or about 450,000 acres per year. We can get that by a reasonable price incentive. I do not think it is likely to be exceeded in the next 12 months. If after next season it is proved that it is likely to be exceeded, there can be an arrangement made by which wheat will be grown under contract. It will be good for everyone and cut out abuses in regard to wheat growing year after year on the same land. It will help the farmer to get credit facilities for seeds and manures if he requires such facilities. We know how good the credit is under the contract system in regard to beet growing. The same type of system could be used in regard to wheat if needed.

The Senator has been speaking for a little over an hour. Is he going to conclude to-night?

I still have a few minutes.

If the Senator is going to be curtailed in the length of time he speaks, he will have the distinction of being the first man ever guillotined in this House.

I have no intention of trying to curtail the Senator's rights. I could have adjourned this House last night until February; but I did not, in order to give the Senator a chance to conclude to-day on the motion—but is he ever going to conclude?

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

It is right that the House at this juncture should know if he is going to conclude tonight.

I intend to conclude before 10 o'clock.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

There is some other business to be disposed of.

In that case I will conclude in less than five minutes. I know the farmers will go down on their knees in gratitude to Senator Hayes for allowing this debate to continue to-day. It is a great privilege or concession to make to the wheat growers of this State and we ought to be duly grateful. Perhaps if we misconduct ourselves we will not be allowed to introduce agricultural matters into this House again for the next four or five years. I do not like that totalitarian attitude which Senator Hayes adopts in regard to this House. I suggest he should reserve it for some other institution.

No case whatever has been made against this motion, either here or in the other House. I appeal to the House to accept the advice given by Senator Sheehy Skeffington, Senator McGee and others—who are not wedded to Fianna Fáil—and to postpone this cut in the price of wheat for at least one year. Then, in the course of the next year, the Government could get in touch with representatives of the farmers' organisations and hammer out a scheme for the following years. It can be done with good will.

It was not the people on this side of the House who brought this question of wheat into politics. It was made a political issue by the Minister for Agriculture in this present year when he slashed the price. We did not do it. We would like to have this question —and all other agricultural questions —taken out of the arena of politics. That can be done by having them settled by agreement between whatever Government is in power and a truly representative organisation of farmers.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Is the motion being pressed?

Motion put.
The Seanad divided: Tá, 15; Níl, 27:—

  • Clarkin, Andrew S.
  • Cogan, Patrick.
  • ffrench O'Carroll, Michael.
  • Hartney, Seán.
  • Hawkins, Fred.
  • Hayes, Seán.
  • Kissane, Éamon.
  • Lynch, Peter T.
  • O'Callaghan, William.
  • O'Reilly, Patrick.
  • O'Sullivan, Ted.
  • Quirke, William.
  • Smith, Matthew.
  • Teehan, Patrick J.
  • Walsh, Louis.

Níl

  • Barniville, Henry L.
  • Bergin, Patrick.
  • Burke, Denis.
  • Butler, John.
  • Carton, Victor.
  • Commons, Bernard.
  • Cox, Arthur.
  • Crosbie, James.
  • Davidson, Mary F.
  • Guinness, Henry E.
  • Hayes, Michael.
  • Hickey, James.
  • L'Estrange, Gerald.
  • Lynch, John.
  • McCrea, James J.
  • McGee, James T.
  • Mannion, John.
  • Meighan, John J.
  • O'Connell, Thomas J.
  • O'Donnell, Frank H.
  • O'Gorman, Patrick.
  • O'Sullivan, John L.
  • Prendergast, Mícheál A.
  • Reidy, James E.
  • Ruane, Seán T.
  • Tierney, Patrick.
  • Tunney, James.
Tellers:—Tá: Senators Ó Cíosáin and Ted O'Sullivan; Níl: Senators Burke and L'Estrange.
Motion declared lost.
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