I move:—
That, in view of the wheat policy announced by the members of the present Government prior to the last General Election, Seanad Éireann deplores the manner in which wheat growers were treated by the Minister for Agriculture during and after the harvest of 1958.
I want to make it clear at the outset that this is a serious motion of censure upon the Minister for Agriculture, upon his Party and upon the Government, because of their behaviour during the wheat harvest of 1958 and since then.
In so doing, the first thing we must consider is the context. What was the context of the situation? In relation to wheat growing over the past few years, the context is briefly that in December, 1953, the then Fianna Fáil Government discovered there was a danger of a wheat surplus and they instructed their civil servants to produce for them a figure which would give the average consumption of Irish wheat per year. The figure given was 300,000 tons. That information was conveyed in the Dáil and there is no point in giving the actual date, line and column.
However, the harvest of 1954 was a very bad one. The Government had changed and was then an inter-Party Government who were elected in May, 1954, and from that day, the Opposition, the Fianna Fáil Party, were extremely unsympathetic with regard to the wheat difficulties facing the then Government. They were extremely unsympathetic with regard to the bad harvest of 1954 and with regard to the danger of a surplus. In 1955, there was a reduction in price and they were similarly unsympathetic and indeed, in 1955, 1956 and 1957, they were almost vindictively attached to the practice of attacking the Government on the basis of the reduction in the price of wheat which the Government unfortunately had to impose because of a threatened surplus.
So we come to the year 1956. A publication is issued monthly or quarterly from the Fianna Fáil head office named Gléas. In its January, 1956, issue, it published some observations. The first observation is:—
"A few days ago the Taoiseach received a deputation from the National Farmers' Association, which put the case for restoring the price of wheat to the 1954 level. From every point of view it is to be hoped that the Government will over-rule Mr. Dillon and accept the unanswerable case which has been made for a restoration of the Fianna Fáil price."
The Fianna Fáil price referred to was 82/6d. per barrel with a moisture content of 22 per cent. and a bushel weight of 63. In the same issue, we read:—
"It is now recognised by all that the slashing of the wheat price was a grave error of judgment by the Government. The results of this error will become still more serious, should there be a further fall this year in the acreage under wheat. Only an immediate Government decision to restore the 1954 price can save Irish wheat-growing from disaster."
Things began to take on a different flavour when a Fianna Fáil Government were elected and according as time wore on. In order to convey to members of the Seanad the sort of feeling there was in the country at the time, I shall quote from the leading article in the Irish Farmers' Journal— naturally, a non-political organ—of Saturday, 14th December, 1957:—
"A statement on wheat prices for 1958 is now long overdue. There have been some vague rumours that the Fianna Fáil Government is not as strongly behind the wheat-growing policy as it was in the past."
"We trust that there is no truth in this because our national economy demands the maximum production of wheat in Ireland."
Further down, we read:
"Any attempt to upset the present level of wheat prices can only lead to reduction in agricultural production. Due to heavy sales this year we will have less cattle to graze on the pastures. Sheep numbers are not sufficiently rapidly increasing to absorb increased grassland output."
That was after the election of 1957. Before the election of 1957, the time referred to in the motion, there were other pronouncements. One of the most pungent of these was by the Minister for Finance, which was made on the radio on 25th February, 1957, and reported in the Irish Times the following day. In his statement, the Minister described the 1954 cut in wheat as “cruel” and “unjust.” He stated that under a Fianna Fáil Government, a remunerative price would be fixed, for crops such as wheat.
When a person says that a price is "cruel and unjust" and that, under a Fianna Fáil Government a remunerative price would be fixed, one can only take such a statement as meaning that the speaker foreshadows a very large increase in price. Young men on farms in this country are very short of capital. They have not the money to buy cattle or to increase their other livestock, but they can get the money to buy a combine harvester. They can get the money to buy a new tractor simply by buying it on the hire purchase system.
These young men—young men, largely—bought farm machinery on the basis of the few pronouncements I have just read out for the House and many hundreds more, beginning with the Fianna Fáil county councillor in the very backward districts, right up to the Minister for Finance. In that situation, and to put this matter in its proper context, we must realise and accept that the Government had a very serious responsibility to the farmers who entered into the purchase of combine harvesters, ploughs and tractors on the hire purchase system and turned over to wheat-growing. These men believed they would get increases in prices and better terms than they had been getting. They believed that the terms they were getting were bad. They were led to believe that by the Fianna Fáil Party and therefore the Fianna Fáil Minister for Agriculture had this serious obligation cast upon him.
Then we arrive at the harvest of 1958, a most disastrous and regrettable harvest comparable only with the harvest of 1954, but it was admittedly much worse because in 1954 alleviations were given by the then Minister for Agriculture. He removed the deductions for moisture content up to a very high level, costing the Exchequer well over £150,000 but these were alleviations that he gave. At the same time, he said, in effect, to the millers at that time: "You will mill a minimum amount of 50 per cent. Irish wheat". A miller said to me he did not believe we would ever get it and he was right because eventually the Minister made it 66-2/3 per cent.
The best way to deal with the 1958 harvest is to deal with the newspaper observations. Here is a heading carried by the Irish Independent at that time: “Hope of Saving Crops Fails. Heavy Rain Causes More Flooding”. I come from County Louth, a county in which a large volume of winter wheat became unfit for anything except to feed to animals. Flour millers are not philanthropists and are not a nationalised body. They are in this thing not for the colour of anybody's bright blue eyes but for profit—and so is everybody else in business. The finger of scorn cannot be pointed at them for that.
The flour millers, with no arrangement made and no Minister for Agriculture at that time, would not— because they were a private or a public concern, answerable to their shareholders or proprietors—buy wheat which was unfit for milling into flour. Then the farmers had the wheat on their hands and had to dispose of it for whatever they could get for it or try to save it themselves and have it dried to feed to animals, or just let it not there with a moisture content of 25 or 26 per cent. and be suitable for nothing. That situation obtained on 4th September for at least a week. On September 5th, there was another headline in the Irish Independent:
"Wheat Shrivelling in Many Areas. New Threat to Harvest Prospects." The report then stated:—
"Wheat is shrivelling in many parts of Ireland, to add to farmers' worries and bringing new grave threat to the harvest. The National Farmers' Association Grain Committee's request to the Minister for Agriculture to meet them for emergency discussions on the situation points to the alarm felt by grain growers. It is believed"
—this is a fact, as can be verified in the leading paper of the day—
"that the growers' leaders may meet the Minister next week."
At that time, I was trying to make contact with the Minister for Agriculture. He was not available to meet anybody. There continued to be this vast quantity of winter wheat—