I think it is not customary to make a speech on this stage of the Bill. The Bill is of the usual pattern. First of all, it provides for the payment from the Central Fund of the balance of the amount granted for Supply Services for 1959-60, that is, it provides for the grant of the full amount, less that already authorised by the Central Fund Act, 1959; secondly, it empowers the Minister for Finance to borrow up to the limit of the issues so provided; and thirdly, it appropriates to the several Supply Services the sums granted by the Dáil since the Appropriation Act of 1958.
Appropriation Bill, 1959 ( Certified Money Bill )— Second and Subsequent Stages.
Question proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."
We are having a feast of opportunities this week of expressing our ideas on policy, and I hope the Minister will not find us too repetitive, even if we do sometimes repeat some idea which we are particularly anxious to express. With the disappearance of Mr. de Valera from active politics, I think everyone feels that a new era is opening up and an old chapter has been closed. As we can see from happenings all around us, this new era is opening up at a most difficult time in world affairs, and our situation is one in which we are faced with many problems involving the question of our ability actually to survive and prosper, both economically and politically. I think it is neither exaggerated nor unfair to say that.
Our position in the world, and particularly in the present European situation, is made the more difficult because some of the policies we have followed in recent years were policies that in many ways have put our present economy ‘on the wrong foot,' as we say in games. We are faced with a Free Trade Area externally and, in our own internal situation, some difficulties in our balance of payments are looming up which will make it difficult for us to produce the exports of industrial products which we require to pay for our imports. 80% of our imports are for industrial production purposes. Agricultural markets seem to be becoming more difficult too. Our preferences in Britain seem to be growing less with the Danish agreement and it is quite likely that our preferences there will disappear altogether in the course of time.
All that has forced us to the need for new thinking, and to the realisation of the need for getting down our costs, both in agricultural and industrial goods and services. The extreme urgency of this situation and the task that lies before any Government does not seem to have dawned upon many of our citizens. There are still—and we see it every day—people who calmly demand a higher and higher standard of living which, of course, one would like to see every citizen enjoy, if it were economically possible. To say that we cannot give everyone that high standard of living is not to say that they should not have it. That unfortunately is one of the things which is thrown at one if one faces the situation sensibly and says what must be done in order that all the things we would like can be achieved.
We still have people asking every day for more and more social benefits. There is hardly a day that we do not see demands of one kind or another for more social benefits and an improvement in existing benefits; in other words, expenditure of all kinds is called for from the national Exchequer. The fact of the matter is, of course, that we shall be lucky if we can manage to maintain our present comparatively low level of employment, our present standard of living, and our social services. I believe, in the present situation, it is more essential to the community than ever that we should have closer economic co-operation with Great Britain and Northern Ireland and that every opportunity should be availed of to expand trade and commerce between us.
Frequently, and indeed continuing, consultation between the Governments is desirable. I welcome the setting-up of the permanent committee to which the Taoiseach referred the other day to further the objective of more and more economic co-operation between our neighbours. I feel that in future we cannot expect any preferential treatment for our exports. We must be prepared to exchange benefits and preferences in a commercially realistic manner. Only on that basis, I think, will we find that people will be prepared to deal with us.
We seem very often to have been given preferential treatment which may have led us to believe we can always go on in this manner. Now, however, there must be a quid pro quo in each thing we do. Our trade relations will have to be on a purely commercial and business basis. That being so, it is clear we cannot afford to shelter inefficiency in our economic life or in any part of it.
I do not advocate the immediate tearing down of tariff barriers, as might appear from a report of a speech I made in the debate here last Tuesday. Some barriers should be lower than their present astronomical heights. I urge the re-shaping of our high protectionist policy in the future and the substitution of a policy of encouragement of industrial enterprise by a system of benevolent taxation designed to encourage efficiency, saving and the ability to sell competitively as well as profitably.
Some protection barrier will have to be used for a long time to come but it will have to be a selective protection policy, guided directly by commonsense commercial rules rather than for any other social reasons. In any case, it is declared Government policy to follow this line. We have been told in Budget speeches and in the White Paper that it is proposed in future only to have a policy which will be directed on purely business lines rather than for social reasons. We need a policy which will give us worthy and efficient industries that can live on their own business merits and so earn their keep to the nation, both on the home and on the export markets. I stress on the home market as well.
There is a mistaken idea that an isolated Ireland is an Ireland free. If we want an Ireland only for the Irish, we should be prepared to take back and provide a high standard of living for the millions of our fellow-countrymen who live on a higher standard of living in other countries. It is estimated that three-quarters of a million of our people have moved to England since we became self-governing. We like every other country, need fresh blood in the persons of foreigners and aliens to reinforce and stimulate our race at all levels, to bring much expert knowledge, experience and energy which we need in our trade and commercial life as well, not to say anything about our cultural life.
I was glad to see that the Taoiseach the other day in the Dáil in his reference to the balance of payments problem at present in existence and visible to us, said he did not contemplate the taking of any drastic prohibitive measures at present as regards imports. His reason was that the strength of our external balances warrants no immediate measures. I welcome that statement. Very often, these measures, when they heal the immediate and big danger, create so many other problems in the economy that they should be avoided at all costs. We saw what happened before in relation to unemployment, in relation even to holding back on production, the closing of factories temporarily in order to get over the situation. I am glad the Taoiseach says there does not seem to be any need to have recourse to any more stringent measures at present, at any rate.
It is a mistake to think we can run even our internal economy on purely Irish goods. Theoretically and on paper, it seems wrong to be importing consumable goods. Of course we should support Irish products where and whenever we can but we cannot expect to sell our goods in other countries, if we refuse to sell theirs in our market. Therefore, a reasonable quantity of goods must always be allowed to come in here. In the distributive trade, an assortment of foreign goods is an absolute necessity in order to create an attractive market. Many of these goods become re-exports, which is a point that is sometimes forgotten.
If our shops are full of Irish goods, without any disparagement of Irish goods, I shall say that trade will drop very considerably because the sameness of the market would not entice people to buy even the Irish goods. A display of foreign goods in reasonable quantities gives a choice and a comparison to the customer and acts as a stimulus to selling. It has been found that more home produced goods are sold when they are well displayed in company with a variety of foreign goods than when they are displayed alone. Foreign articles can also act as a sour and a headline to our home producers. When home producers have foreign goods side by side with their goods, it puts them on their toes and gives the customer a comparison which creates that competition which is the essence of all vigorous life. This placing of foreign goods alongside our Irish goods is also a practice run for the export market. The element of competition that is introduced by these foreign goods is not only highly desirable but absolutely necessary.
The Opposition could without doubt indulge in a lot of "I told you so" criticism about the failure of certain Government policies but the time has come when we cannot afford this kind of political luxury of merely criticising. I was glad to see that the leaders of the Fine Gael Party in the other House have promised their co-operation to the Government, and that is only right. We are all in this. This is our Ireland and it is the Ireland of all Parties. We are all in a spot to use a colloquialism, and it is right we should all help to get out of it and put ourselves in a strong financial and economic position. Every help should be given to solve our difficulties and I know that help and co-operation should and will be forthcoming.
One thing I should like to suggest is that the State must slow down on its expenditure. The size of our national debt is highly disturbing and a heavy weight on a not too healthy economy. The policy of State direction and control of our industrial life has been carried too far and has left us with a rigid, unimaginative and extravagant mechanism and this weight is too heavy for our small and shrinking business community.
State bodies involve a huge capital investment and they absorb too much of the savings of the people. Last year, out of £146 million of capital issues, only of £6 million went to the private sector. It is clear—and it has been advised by objective observers— that more reliance on private enterprise and the creation of a climate favourable and attractive to private enterprise will create that amount of private capital, thus relieving the State of the necessity for adding more and more to our national obligations. If we can get money in the commercial, in the natural business way, that is, earn it, save it and build it up, it is much better than capital that has to be taken holus bolus out of the accumulated savings of the people over a period of years.
It is the duty of the Government and of each one of us to make citizens aware of the difficult position in which we find ourselves. As Senators know, I was nominated to this Chamber by the Federated Union of Employers and, incidentally, by the Banks Standing Committee, and it is my duty to say certain things on this occasion, as I do every year, in that capacity. Some, but not all employers are aware of the seriousness of our situation and the efforts we shall be called upon to make in order to maintain our economy. In fact, it will take all we can to maintain our present standard of living. However, the Conference in the Mansion House on Monday last did quite a lot to open people's eyes to the situation, and I know from being at a meeting of employers since that the difficulties they have to face and the efforts they will be called upon to make in order to do their share in the years before us are very much in the minds of employers.
There is no evidence, however, to show that organised labour has any conception of how things stand with our economy and with our whole national trading position. You may have read in today's papers that the Congress of Irish Unions had a conference these last few days and at that conference set themselves a programme of demands upon the economy and industry that shows no appreciation whatsoever of the realities and facts of our economic life. The time has come when the Taoiseach, the Government and all of us should tell the citizens plainly and bluntly how we stand and what is required of everybody to meet our difficulties.
This is no time to increase costs of production and to reduce our working hours—quite the reverse. Rather is it the time to give a better return for money paid by all members of the community and at all levels, and this includes the workers. It cannot be looked upon as either helpful or cooperative that the leader of the Congress of Irish Unions should indulge publicly in a general and vicious invective against private employers. Furthermore, this advocating of more and more State expenditure is not the solution of our economic ills.
The disquieting feature in recent times has been the public criticism and accusations of failure of the private enterprise system. This propaganda has been built up by the familiar method of constant repetition, merely saying: "Private enterprise has failed and therefore the State will have to do this and that." It has not failed. The fact is there has been, on the other hand, a corresponding measure of praise for the State bodies. It is easy to be successful when one has an unlimited supply of capital available; when you have a monopoly market where there is no price competition, where success or failure in regard to making a profit is of no account and where there is the advantage of dipping into the coffers of the State to make up deficits. If private enterprise were given similar advantages, it would wax strong and confound the critics. If you call the results that come from that background success, that kind of success will not make this country very rich or very strong.
Personally, I believe our failure is due to too much reliance upon State initiative which has had the effect of stifling enterprise in our industrial and commercial life, even in a private enterprise economy. The State has been taking unjustifiably large sums of money from citizens in the form of numerous loans, thus mopping up the income and savings of our people and paralysing the progress of private enterprise.
I should like to see the Government turning their attention and efforts towards fostering private enterprise in our economy. They profess to lean mainly on private enterprise, but, quite frankly, I do not believe it. I should want to see something better done to develop our private enterprise economy and less reliance on the State, to believe that they are really serious in their attitude towards private enterprise. Those of us who are engaged in private enterprise would much prefer to be told now that this is only the sort of padding talk that goes into a statement of policy. Actions speak louder than words and our actions in the past 25 or 30 years certainly do not point to any belief in private enterprise, or any desire to make it good, strong and reliable.
Finally, as I said before, we are in a difficult situation at present. It is a situation in respect of which we are all in the same boat. The time has come, with Government lead, to tell the people the truth about the situation and what is really wanted. It is time for everybody to work harder and do more for the money they get, instead of starting off now looking for better standards of living which we cannot afford but which we will have when we can afford them. We ought to work harder and get on with the job. We must realise that we have got to produce industrial and agricultural goods, mainly agricultural, that will sell abroad. If we do not do that, there is no use talking about higher standards of living in the future. We shall not be able to maintain our present standards but we shall be in an economy which will afford a much lower standard of living than we enjoy today.
On page 262 of the current Estimates we have the grant to Córas Iompair Éireann. Many of us will rejoice to see a reduction of £1,700,000 approximately. Government policy, I understand, remains, and rightly remains, to keep the main lines and the more popular local lines working. I hope that this will remain Government policy. But I suggest to the Government, through the Minister, that something more than financial encouragement is needed.
The railways need moral encouragement. I propose to suggest one way in which that could be done very simply. At present, how many Ministers of State, how many high Government officials, and how many high officials of Córas Iompair Éireann, travel by railway? Very few, so far as I know. Contrast the situation in other enlightened countries. I read of Presidents, Kings, Queens and Prime Ministers travelling by railway. I see pictures of them arriving at railway stations and being met in France, England and elsewhere at the railway stations with all the pomp and panoply that they deserve. The highest ranking railway officials are there. The red carpets are out, and there is plenty of publicity. Public interest is aroused, and travelling by railway gains a cachet that it cannot gain in any other way. It remains fashionable to travel by railway. It helps not merely the profits of the railway company, but, I suggest, it also helps the workers on the railway. They are encouraged. The stationmaster turns out. The other officials turn out in full style. The engine drivers are probably shaken hands with and encouraged. This reflects itself throughout the whole railway system.
It seems to me that in this country we have neglected this. I can guess various reasons for it. Any that have occurred to me, however, do not seem to be thoroughly good reasons for it. I simply, here and now, appeal to the Minister and to the Government to consider setting a better example to the rest of the country in the matter of travelling by railway.
I suggest it would be better for their own nerves. As a matter of fact I have made the experiment of travelling from Dublin to Cork by car and from Dublin to Cork by the excellent Enterprise express. There is not the slightest shadow of a doubt that the express is much more restful and pleasant. You can see the countryside better if you travel by rail. Also, the service is cheap, if you allow for all the forms of depreciation on a car. The service is extraordinarily good. This would be proved to the public in a way much better than by any advertisement if the President, the Taoiseach, or some of the Ministers of State, occasionally travelled by rail.
I look forward eventually to seeing pictures of the President, the Taoiseach—perhaps the Minister for Finance would be the first to set the good example—arriving in full state at Kingsbridge or Amiens Street and being welcomed there with all the resources of the rather moth-eaten red carpets which they presumably keep there at the moment. I do not think it is a trivial matter. It is the kind of support that is needed just as well as financial support.
The second matter I have to refer to concerns a serious threat to one of our national treasures. In a small area of the county Clare called the Burren some very rare plants grow naturally. There are gentian, orchids and maidenhair ferns—plants which do not grow wild anywhere else in these islands. They are unique. They are irreplaceable.
What is happening there at the moment? An enterprising gentleman with some official encouragement—that is why I believe I am in order in referring to it here—has begun rooting up these irreplaceable plants and selling them for dollars to foolish buyers —let me emphasise "foolish buyers" because the plants will almost certainly not grow anywhere else than in the Burren in County Clare, and if they want plants of that kind which will grow, they can apply to the local seedsman and they will get plants just as good. They have not the sentimental appeal of having been rooted out of the limestone of County Clare, which is the main thing they want them for. These people go away with the plants, and the plants wither in their homes. Sentiment will not salve their feelings then.
I suggest in the interest of the country in general and in the interest of what I venture to call enlightened tourism in particular—there is unenlightened tourism, too; we see a good deal of it around us—this depredation should be stopped, or at least not encouraged by officials who are under the control of the Government. These plants, I insist, are irreplaceable national treasures.
Secondly, they are a perennial attraction to the kind of tourists we want to encourage—scientists, botanists, plant-lovers, who come to Clare every year and stay there for a while in order to study these plants in their natural habitat. That desolate part of County Clare will not attract them, if these plants are exterminated or greatly reduced in number, as they may well be if this gentleman is not stopped or discouraged. What he is doing is selling part of the west of Ireland—an irreplaceable part. It is not quite the Gaeltacht, but it is very near to it. He is risking putting a stop to visitors who will pay money to local hotelkeepers and others—to keep the people in the west where we want to keep them. Some of the plants have already been rooted out and sent away to wither in the United States. It may get dollars, but I think it is deplorable. I suggest that if the Minister has any power in the matter, he should take steps to stop it.
I have every sympathy with Senator Stanford's appeal on behalf of C.I.E. For many years, I have been making a similar case in Leinster House.
I did not go as high as Ministers or senior civil servants; I asked that public representatives, Deputies and Senators, who have to travel to Dublin should use this asset which we have to keep and preserve, and which is costing us money to preserve now. I regret to have to tell the Senator that I got strangely little encouragement. I hope that he will be listened to where I was not. I shall give him any support I can. I wonder is the Senator making too great a case about what is happening to the flowers in County Clare——
It all depends on what is happening about the flowers.
I saw an explanatory letter from an official in Shannon Airport which said that the flowers there were for display purposes only. He did not say that any attempt was being made to export them or to sell them. If what the Senator said is true, it is deplorable.
I shall go on now to the rest of the subjects I want to discuss and I do not think I shall be able to present any flowers for what I have to say. This is a stock-taking occasion and I think with the greatest kindness and optimism, one could not paint a good picture of the state of the nation. The Government are facing very considerable difficulties and I hope I shall be believed when I say that I sympathise with them in the almost superhuman task they have to face.
The difficulties are considerable and I think all the indications are very disturbing. The balance of payments position alone is a very serious one. I am sorry that Senator Lenihan has left the House because on this occasion last year he discussed and analysed the balance of payments position very fully and I should like him to resume that discussion today, in the light of the more recent figures. I assure the House and the Minister that I do not want to give any encouragement to what I might call a kind of national hypochondria which we suffer from. We are willing to feel that we are susceptible to many ills. I do not think that things are good, although I believe there is nothing basically wrong with the country. We have gone wrong, as I said in this House on two or three occasions in the past 12 months. We have gone wrong somewhere.
I think the polling figures at elections are an indication in themselves that the people have lost faith in the authority and ability and power of the Oireachtas to put them on the right road. The people cannot help noting that we spent so long in this House and in the other House in recent months discussing constitutional changes, whilst the Danes were elbowing us out of our place of business. I have no doubt the Danish farming journals for the past six months devoted all their editorials to the merits of the straight vote! We have lost a significant advantage; we fiddled whilst the Danish farmers and the Danish Government were consolidating. The lesson could be salutary. The warning given by Dr. Cahan at the meeting in Dublin on Monday was more than a warning. I think it contained an indictment and only if we are willing to accept such indictments will we make any move to get rid of the malaise from which we now suffer. That malaise is there because there is disturbing evidence of unreality.
Ten days ago, the Taoiseach wrote a letter to the Lord Mayor of Cork. I have here a report from the Cork Examiner for July 15th. It is headed “Taoiseach's Letter on New Investment” and “Cork's Lord Mayor Appeals for Worthwhile Suggestions.” The letter says that it was the Government's stated policy that the State should in future participate to an even greater extent than heretofore in development activities. The report goes on:
The letter stated that these activities included those which, while not directly commercial, would contribute to the overall expansion of the economy; help in the achievements of increased production, and create new employment opportunities.
"It is," the letter added, "with this end in view that it has been decided to establish a special planning branch in the Department of Finance, where proposals for new State investment activity can be examined, organised and correlated.
"In this connection the Government is anxious to receive proposals relating to openings for State investment in important public projects of economic merit."
I want to stress this part of the letter:
"I shall be glad to receive suggestions from Cork Corporation for projects of this nature, in which the Corporation would consider it desirable in the public interest to engage, but which are not included in their present programme."
That letter was received with what I can only describe as incredulous joy by many members of the council. I was, I hope, intelligent enough or perhaps foolish enough, to criticise the letter and said that it seemed to emanate from fairyland because I do not think that is the way things should be done.
My protest was not a stupid protest. The whole conception embodied in that kind of appeal is far-fetched. However, as a result of that letter, Cork Corporation met the following week and spent 1½ hours deciding what kind of plans they would put before the Minister. They decided to recommend to the Taoiseach that an old sewerage plan for the re-drainage of the city should be re-examined and that we should do some land reclamation for the purpose of building a racecourse. They decided almost unanimously—not quite; I was against it—to do more examining and think out more proposals in the coming weeks.
Surely that kind of thing, that kind of scene belongs to Lewis Carroll and should be in the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. If anybody thinks that problems will be solved by that kind of thing, I hope I shall not be taken as a party to it. Imagine 1,000 local councillors all over the country sitting for the next two or three weeks like 1,000 copies of Rodin's The Thinker with their legs crossed and their chins in their hands and brows furrowed, thinking what they are to do. Is this the blueprint for employment?
It is better than playing politics.
I am not playing politics. Is this the £100,000,000 plan about which we in Cork Corporation and councillors of other corporations and local bodies are asked to do a bit of thinking? Is it even being fair to the people to do that kind of thing? It is the cause of the people's despair. That is all I propose to say about that suggestion but I think it is one of the worst symptoms of the lot, that feeling that by talking and writing letters, we can get over the physical troubles and disabilities which certainly will not be got over by sweet words.
I want to go on to a suggestion which to me is much more interesting but less important, although it may not be less important, as it has to do with literacy. Possibly there is a closer connection than would appear on the surface. I am a representative in this House of the Library Association of Ireland and I want to use this opportunity to ask the Minister to improve the library services of the country. Ten years ago, a promising step was taken when we legislated and set up the Library Council, which was to administer and plan for the enlargement and improvement of our library services. In those 10 years, the Library Council issued two reports, which set out what was wrong with the library services.
In those ten years, the Library Council levied a tax for its own support on every local authority. Nothing else has happened. What I believe to have been the honest purpose behind the setting up of that Library council has not been achieved.
I want to give some figures, briefly. In Great Britain, our ancient enemy's territory, they spend £17½ million on library services every year. Here we spend £330,000. That is, comparatively, only one-third of the British expenditure. That reflects itself in the following figures: One person in three uses the public library in Great Britain; one person in 16 uses the Public Library in Ireland. I am not making the case that we are illiterate, but I say we are not helping our people to become more literate.
I regard this public service as one of great importance. Of the public authorities who run our libraries at the moment—and some of them are enlightened bodies, while some of them are not—in the past three years four public authorities, four counties, reduced the library rate which they had been striking before that, although the price of books has increased very considerably. Where the reductions did not take place, the library rate was maintained most grudgingly. Wherever the local authorities were generous and allowed an increase in the library rate, the results were striking. The number of reader registrations increased very considerably, while the book issues grew at an even higher rate. The cities are not good, but they are comparatively good when compared with some of the counties.
The librarians who administer the county schemes are mainly dedicated and good men and women, but they are completely frustrated and helpless in the face of the parsimony with which Irish society has treated this service. It is important for us to ensure that a child who grows up here is not less fortunate than a child who grows up in England, in regard to access to books and the mind broadening the book brings. Even if we look at it from the very lowest level, if many of our children have to emigrate, it is desirable that they should be more finely finished.
I want the Minister to consider very favourably using this machine which was established by a Fianna Fáil Government in 1947. It is an excellent scheme on paper, but the Minister should consider making it work. After ten years, surely it is not too soon to ask that what was then put on paper should be put now on a more realistic basis? A very small subvention from central funds would make an enormous improvement in the book purchase fund of any local authority. We could double the entire book purchases of the whole country on what is spent on five miles of the Dublin-Cork main road. Which do Senators think is more important? This would fill the book shelves and raise the figure of readers. It would give money to the librarians, who are doing so much on so little, and it might raise the value of the services which are spoken about so highly today.
An increase in literacy, in the long run, would contribute quite a lot to the solution of many of the problems which seem to frustrate us now. At any rate, out of pride alone, we should see that from this on we will end our shameful disparity with the British spending in this regard.
If I keep myself to one case and put it as well as I can—I hope to get some support from other Senators—it will probably be the most effective way of achieving what I want to achieve.
This is one of the very few opportunities Senators have of dealing with Government policy and administration. I do not intend to speak at great length, as I have come to the conclusion that there is too much talk and that the time has come for a period of calm, in which people will cease criticising one another and get on with their various jobs.
It has been said in the Press, and it seems to be generally recognised in the country, that we have begun a new era. There are certain indications that that is so. That provides the Taoiseach and the Government with an opportunity which apparently, for strange reasons, they have not had up to the present time.
It is a very remarkable fact that the Taoiseach, in speaking in the Dáil on the Ministers and Secretaries Act, under which a new Department of State has been established, expressed the view that for a long time he himself had considered that it was necessary to divide the Department of Industry and Commerce. It seems to me to be extraordinary that the Taoiseach, who was then Tánaiste and Minister for Industry and Commerce, apparently has held that view for such a long time and has been unable to gain acceptance of the idea that he ought not to be overworked and that greater efficiency could be achieved by dividing that Department into two separate Departments with two separate Ministers.
Personally, it is a hopeful indication that a new situation has been reached, where the decisions of the Government are apparently not to be subject to the kind of veto to which the Minister for Industry and Commerce was apparently subjected up to the present time. There is an indication, too, that the Taoiseach and the Government have an idea that it is now more important than ever before to foster goodwill among all sections of the people and, indeed, it is heartening to the people in the country to learn that so far as the Taoiseach is concerned, he will not, even in the heat of debate, indulge in personal recrimination. Of course, we all know the people are heartily sick and tired of the recriminations of politicians against one another.
Progress will not be made while the people have not got confidence in the political institutions of the country and the people who man those institutions. If we had less criticism and less talk, and more thought about the problems of the country, we might develop the necessary confidence which the mere introduction of legislation and its passage, perhaps hastily, through both Houses will not produce. I am rather inclined to think that the Government are faced, at the present time, with the insuperable difficulty of persuading all classes of the people that it is not the Government, in the long run, which can really achieve an improvement in our standard of living, but the people themselves, and that the role of Government is directed, or should be directed, towards enabling the people to achieve a higher standard of living for themselves. Individually, and collectively the people can do more for themselves than the Government. In the past, there have been too many promises that the Government would introduce this scheme or that, which would bring about an improvement in economic conditions, raise the standard of living and increase productivity.
We have to get the notion across that increased productivity and an improved standard of living can result only from the efforts of the individual, whether he is self-employed, employed by a private firm or employed in a Government or semi-Government body, and that the welfare of the country depends upon the sum total of the efforts of the individuals in all classes of employment, and that the passage of legislation and the introduction of various schemes will not, of themselves, bring about an improvement in the economic position of the country. It seems a truism to speak in that fashion and, undoubtedly, it is a truism, but the notion that the people can look to the Government and the State for assistance in everything, and blame the Government when things go badly, has got to be countered, and countered in some positive way by the Government themselves, by all members of the Oireachtas and by people in responsible positions.
The rate of emigration is said to have slowed down in the past year. Whether or not that is so, I do not know. There does not seem to be any effective means of checking whether or not emigration is on the wane or whether it is proceeding at the same rate as some time ago. It seems to me that if we are to stem emigration effectively we shall have to take more positive steps to deal with it as a problem in itself. Various Government schemes, and Government policy in various directions can indirectly affect the rate of emigration, but it seems to me to be necessary to take more positive and active steps to change the outlook of the younger people on emigration.
I am quite satisfied that there are numbers of cases in which young people emigrate merely because the habit and custom of emigration has grown up. They feel, without any justification—and indeed they realise how little justification there is when they are faced with the realities of emigration—that England or America is the only place where they can get a proper living and be better off. In this connections, some positive plan ought to be advocated not only by the Government but by other bodies which can influence the outlook of the young people and of the parents. Churches and schools in particular can help to mould the minds of the younger people against the idea that emigration is the only cure for people in certain parts of the country.
I remember when I was going to school, in the school books at that time there were certain lessons, certain ballads, or poems, if you like to put them into that category, which rather emphasised the virtues of Ireland and her traditions. I have looked at some of the text books in use in national schools in recent times and I did not find anything in them which would seem to promote a spirit of pride or a spirit of hope in the Ireland of to-day. I think that is a mistake. It is a pity that children should go through national schools, technical schools and to a lesser extent through the secondary schools, and not realise the advantages that are to be derived from living in this country, even with our economic conditions and the standard of living these economic conditions provide.
It would probably be the function of the Department of Education, in conjunction with the churches and other bodies, to devise some ways and some means by which a spirit of pride and hope in the Ireland of to-day could be developed and I believe that that, together with an improvement in our economic conditions, could do a great deal to stem the tide of emigration.
I have read the Government's White Paper on economic policy for the future and, as Senator O'Brien pointed out on the Central Fund Bill, if I remember him correctly, it is not essentially a policy to provide employment but to increase production. I do not know of any policy which the Government have to deal with the very large and considerable section of the country in which unemployment is prevalent and the large areas where people have an unduly low standard of living for 1959.
I do not know of anything in the Government's policy that will provide farmers, with 30 acres of land and less, with a proper standard of living. It is very easy to talk about an agricultural policy, policies for introducing a bovine tuberculosis eradication scheme, fixing the price of wheat, fixing and guaranteeing the price of milk and having a guaranteed price for grade A pigs. All that does not touch, except in a very remote and negligible fashion, the living conditions of the man and his wife and children on a farm of 30 acres, 25 acres or 15 acres in Mayo, Leitrim, Galway or those counties where the land is not so good.
So far as I can see, Government policy and agricultural policy are directed, in the main, towards increasing production on the larger farms. Emigration is not a problem in relation to people living on larger farms in this country. It comes chiefly from the small farms of Mayo, Galway, Sligo, Leitrim, Donegal, Kerry, Clare and these counties where the land is poor. I do not know what the Government have in mind for these people. Unless a man with 25 or 30 acres of land is able to get from his produce on the farm an income something the equivalent of £9 or £10 a week the practice of locking up the farm and bringing over his wife and children to England will develop. Travelling through the west of Ireland frequently, as I do, I am appalled, even passing along the main roads, by the number of houses one sees with no curtains, no smoke from the chimney, with a lock on the door and all the people gone.
I would urge upon the Minister for Finance and, through him, upon the Government the development of a special policy suited to the needs of the people on our small farms. On my reckoning, these people constitute perhaps 50 per cent. of the rural population. I believe it is from that 50 per cent. that the greatest number of people emigrate. There may be schemes the Government have for these people. A valid criticism of Government policy is that, if they have schemes for people such as these, sufficient effort is not made to bring home to people the existence of these schemes, the advantages to be derived from them and how they can go about bringing home these advantages to themselves.
I remember as a youngster in a national school in a country area in Mayo in the 1930's when the Government embarked on the policy of producing wheat that every schoolchild got a leaflet from a Government Department, presumably the Department of Agriculture, urging people to grow wheat. I remember quite distinctly the colourful little two-paged document got out for that purpose. Of course, the farmers of the place where I was going to school at the time knew nothing whatever about or were not at all impressed by the idea of growing wheat. That is not to say they did not support very strongly the Fianna Fáil Government in those days.
That was a real effort to bring home and right into the house the information that this new policy was afoot. I do not know that the advertisements in our daily papers, perhaps in the Sunday papers' and in local papers and sometimes from Radio Éireann, are as effective as they should be in propagating the news of different schemes the Government have. I do not know what result that kind of idea and variations of it would have. If the Government have various schemes or if county committees of agriculture and local authorities have various schemes, that can benefit the public, when the Oireachtas and the Government have gone to the trouble of formulating them, every effort should be made to ensure that full advantage is taken of them.
There are a few minor matters to which I wish to refer in connection with the administration of Government business. Perhaps the Minister might be able to deal with them. Recently I have seen a case where cattle which were passed by the officer of the Minister for Agriculture as being T.B. free turned out in fact not to be so. I understand that the tests made on cattle for the purposes of the export market are not necessarily 100 per cent. certain; that perhaps between one and two per cent. of cattle tested will be passed as being free of T.B. but may not be free of it but that there is not much that can be done about it. That is not the point I wish to bring to the attention of the Minister.
As far as I can gather, there is a time limit within which the tuberculin used in testing cattle for T.B. should be used. The reason cattle in this case were passed as being free from T.B. when in fact they had it was that the tuberculin was used outside the date on which it should have been used. That is a very serious deficiency in the whole T.B. testing scheme. If the word got abroad to English cattle buyers that the T.B. testing scheme in this country was not fairly foolproof, it could have a very serious effect upon our cattle exports as well as, indeed, of nullifying, to some degree at any rate, the whole scheme of bovine T.B. eradication. That is a matter that should be looked into.
I remember upon this Bill last year or the previous year that Senator Ó Maolain had occasion to refer to Radio Éireann. I listen to Radio Éireann as frequently as I can but that is not, I am afraid, very frequently. The standard of programmes on Radio Éireann and particularly the Irish programmes is very commendable and very good. The Irish programmes are better, of a higher standard and more entertaining than their equivalent in English. However, it seems to me that the policy of Radio Éireann in relation to its news bulletins is very defective and has given rise to considerable complaint.
I can never understand why, on Budget day, the people who are interested in the view of the Minister for Finance on the economic development of the country in the previous year and the prospect for the future must wait until 10.45 p.m. in order to get a report of what the Minister has said. It seems deplorable that there should not be that much elasticity in Radio Éireann as to extend the news broadcasting time from 15 minutes in one day in the year to perhaps 20 to 25 minutes in relation to the 6.30 p.m. news.
I must also comment adversely on the manner of the presentation of the feature "Today in the Dáil " so far as reports of debates in this House are concerned. I think this House, which does not seem to command a great deal of respect—at any rate, until recently —does not get its fair share of time in that programme. I have observed on occasions that when the report of the Dáil proceedings was finished at 10.58 p.m. Radio Éireann could not even fill in the other five minutes so as to give a five minute report on the proceedings in this House but stopped short at 10.58 p.m. That has happened on different occasions.
In addition, it seems to me that the reports of the proceedings are somewhat prejudiced and biased and that a fair allocation of time has not been given to speakers on different sides of the House. I shall not say against which side the prejudice is operated; I shall leave that to the imagination of the House. However, it is not right that there should be a prejudice in reporting as I have observed over quite an extended period.
In the Dáil on the Vote for the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, there was a good deal of praise for the efficiency of that Department in the administration of postal, telephone and telegraph services. The people generally will be very pleased by the reduction in the charges for telephone calls which is to operate from 1st August, but there is one respect in which the telephone service could be improved, and it is a very minor one. The telephone directory has fallen to pieces in most offices and households and in whatever respect the Department of Posts and Telegraphs could be accused of being hide-bound, its telephone directories certainly are not. People are paying high rentals for telephones and they are entitled to have telephone directories which will last for at least six months of the year. My own did not last more than three months. It has fallen asunder and in consequence of that, having lost some of the pages I have to ring up the telephone exchange to find out certain telephone numbers. That does not seem to make for efficiency.
There is a matter which, in relation to the Department of Justice, disturbs me, that is, the closing down of rural Garda stations. It is my opinion that the difficulty which has attended the detection of murders in the past year or two is not unrelated to the closing down of Garda stations and to an attitude which has developed as a result of policy within the Garda service.
It is highly undesirable that in the ordinary course of events promotion from the ranks of the Garda Síochána should not be available up to the highest rank. I do not know what Government appointed the Commissioner of the Garda Síochána, who was a civilian before assuming that office, but I am aware that the appointment of a civilian has resulted in a great deal of resentment and has reduced the efficiency of the very fine force the Garda Síochána was and still is. The idea that money is the criterion by which a service should be judged is also responsible for the closing down of Garda stations. The Garda Síochána exist not alone for the purpose of detecting crime but to preserve and, I should imagine, to protect the peace of the area in which they are stationed. The Garda Síochána living in remote rural areas got to know everything about everybody there. If members of the Garda Síochána are touring around in a car, they will very quickly lose touch with the people and when something such as a murder happens in an area, that makes immensely difficult the job of detection.
The Garda Síochána have always set a certain standard in a number of matters in rural areas and the closing down of stations has meant a loss to those areas. Before the policy of closing down of Garda stations had been fully implemented, the Government should at this stage review the extent to which the policy has operated to the disadvantage of the community. If they are satisfied that it is not operating advantageously, if they do not reverse the policy, they should at least not proceed with implementing it any further for the present.
There is one phase of Government activity I should like to stress today, but before entering into that, I should like to ask the Minister could there be any more expeditious way of getting the moneys out to local authorities in their financial year. In my county council and in others, an enormous amount must be paid to banks for overdraft accommodation, and over the whole country in a year, it must amount to a very substantial sum.
Recently I had occasion to see a Northern Ireland demand note for rates and on that was a note saying that if paid within one month, a two-and-a-half per cent discount could be subtracted. If that were introduced here, it would be of great assistance to local authorities and to the Government generally in meeting the huge sum that has to be raised till the rates come in in sufficient amount. There are people to whom it would be an advantage to gain this two-and-a-half per cent. There are people who have money lying in the bank on which they are getting no interest. Perhaps due to the fact that it is rather a custom not to pay rates too early, that money is lying there of no advantage to the customer or the bank. It would be of great assistance to the local authority and it would be of assistance in actual cash to the owner of the money, the ratepayer, if he were getting two-and-a-half per cent. for allowing the local authority to use that money at an earlier stage in the year. I suggest to the Minister that at some near date he should consider facilitating local authorities in allowing a two-and-a-half per cent. or some discount, if rates are paid promptly. It is a very important point for both the ratepayers and the local authorities.
I should like to join with Senator Barry in his plea for greater support for the library service. In any county council, when it comes to an estimates meeting it is very hard to increase the amount for the library service when you are paring a penny here and a halfpenny there of the county manager's estimate. I have not got the figures here now, but there is a great demand for text books and books of a non-fictional nature, which represent the greatest part of the demand for books from the public libraries. That should be a spur to the Government to give even some small assistance to the library service.
The main part of the remarks I want to address to the Government is in the nature of a plea for agricultural education, particularly in the primary schools. I should like to quote from page 109 of Economic Development:
" The broadening and deepening of the educational system would take many years to accomplish, but if only because of the time-lag involved before aspiration can become achievement, it is important that no time be lost in giving our educational system an agricultural bias."
On page 110, there are two very important sentences:
"The teaching of nature study is, undoubtedly, the most effective means of giving a rural bias to primary education, and there seems no convincing reason why the subject should not be taught in rural primary schools (as is the case In almost every country in Europe) with the basic object of giving children an understanding of the importance, the wonder and the dignity of country life. Since this must be achieved without overloading the already heavy curriculum, it may involve a reassessment of the time given to other subjects, including Irish."
As a countryman myself, that, to my mind, is a very important and serious page from Economic Development. I do not think it is necessary to comment upon it but when we turn to the Programme for Economic Expansion, we get at page 23 the only real answer to all that in this extract:
The instilling of a real interest in and respect for rural life in young people must be fostered at all educational levels—in the primary school, the secondary school, the vocational school and the university. Consideration is being given to the more general teaching of nature study in national schools and the special encouragement of agricultural science as a subject in secondary schools.
To my mind, that sentence in the Programme for Economic Expansion is more or less a pious hope that some day we may be able to do something. There is no promise of anything and I think that farming will stagnate for another 30 years unless we get agricultural education in a far more advanced and detailed way than at present.
Where are the children who leave school at 14 years of age in the country to get any agricultural education at all, apart from a rural science class which may or may not be in their nearest technical school? It is quite likely that the technical school will not have it. Where are the children to get not so much an education as an interest or a slight brush of education which might give them that interest to seek further knowledge in the secondary school, perhaps?
I do not think that the nature study, as envisaged probably in the Programme for Economic Expansion will be really enough, but I do not say that next year, we can turn out national teachers who will be able straight away to give any instruction in agricultural subjects, but let them give the instruction in nature study. Surely, we could, perhaps, by grouping schools together or by having a travelling lecturer for so many schools, give once or twice a week a lecture to the pupils of the national schools in the rural areas on some agricultural subject? It need not be very detailed but it could at least give some technical details which would interest the boy or girl. They could be told that there are such things as proteins or different forms of bag manures or something like that. Even that would get them started.
Among agricultural workers, we have unskilled people in the sense in which "unskilled" is used in industry. They have no interest in what they are doing. They have given up long ago, perhaps, trying to understand—if they ever tried—what the ingredients of a feeding stuff might be. They have no means whatsoever of finding out, except, perhaps, by going to the agricultural instructor who may be able to come once a month to see them or, perhaps, twice a month.
It is for those children in the country that I make a special plea. Something should be done in the way of agricultural education by giving them lectures in the primary schools. When the Agricultural Institute Bill was going through this House I put in several amendments with that end in view. I was informed by the then Taoiseach, who was in charge of the Bill, that it was not a teaching institute, but I asked that facilities should be given for a great number of the staff of that institute to give lectures in the secondary schools on the work of the Institute and on farming subjects generally until we got that demand for knowledge in the farming community, which we have not got at the moment and without which we shall not have the prosperity in agriculture which we should have.
Only yesterday in the Dáil, the Taoiseach admitted that the whole prosperity of this country depends upon the agricultural community and agricultural production. It seems to me that the world demand now will be for cheaper foodstuffs. We are living beside a country which subsidises its foodstuffs. We have to contend with that. From agreements which Great Britain has made with other countries we see that we shall have to contend, perhaps, with cheaper foodstuffs on the market. In other words, we shall have to produce our goods more cheaply, and the one way we can do that is by educating the farmers or giving them facilities for education so that they can produce cheaper foodstuffs. If the farmer can feed five beasts where he fed four before, it will be a step forward. Those are the things which are very important. The seeds of that knowledge could be sown in the primary school at very little expense by having lectures.
We have recently seen that the Government are doing a little for what I think was termed adult education, adult farming classes. That still leaves a gap. Young people coming on have to wait until they are adults before they can pick up any agricultural education. At the same time, it is admitted that there is a need for that education. I sometimes think that the generation for which the Government are trying to cater now by giving them adult education should, perhaps, be dropped. We should go down further to the young people so that perhaps in ten years we would have a much more live and healthy farming community.
In industry and in all these spheres, there are apprenticeship schemes. We have nothing like that in the farming industry. Perhaps, the son on his father's farm learns nothing else but what his father knew and that may be very antiquated indeed. The trend now, strangely enough, in the Dáil and in this House today, is rather on the industrial side, but we must remember that it is on agriculture that this country depends. It is on agriculture that this country always depended, and it has a name and unless we foster and assist agriculture in the way I suggest, we shall lose that name. Other countries in Europe are fostering agriculture in a scientific and technical way that we are not doing here and in Government speeches and speeches made in these Houses lately we seem to have forgotten the importance of agriculture, perhaps because the agriculturists are not so eloquent or so talked of as those who support the industrial side of our economy. We should be very careful not to let agriculture, for lack of attention or lack of technical knowledge, die out. Perhaps the phrase "die out" is a strong one, but at least we should not let it remain stagnant.
In that regard—I cannot remember the exact quotation—recently I came across a quotation which went something like this: "While waiting for our roses to bloom, we have let our laurels wither." It is from agriculture that this country has won its laurels and we must be very careful not to let it wither while waiting for our industry to bloom.
I should like first to deal with the progress being made in the eradication of bovine tuberculosis. Last year on this Bill, I expressed the view that I was afraid that through lack of adequate finance, this scheme might not make the progress it should make and the Minister assured the House that there would be no curtailment of any money required to speed up the scheme. I believe the Minister has lived up to that assurance, but I also believe that the money being applied to this scheme is being wasted or misdirected in many cases. There is far too much looseness in the scheme itself and while farmers are getting generous compensation for their reactors, in many cases these are not being replaced by cattle free from tuberculosis. As far as I know, there is no law compelling them to replace them— except perhaps West of the Shannon— or if there is a law, it is not being put into effect. While I might complain that there is not sufficient law to make this scheme effective, I am not in any way advocating further legislation. What I should like to advocate is incentives because I think they would be much more effective than legislative measures. One incentive I should like to see being put into operation is an increase in the price of milk to the creameries. An increase for milk from T.B. free herds of 2d or even 1d per gallon would be the best possible encouragement to give to the farmers to get their herds free. The increase would more than pay the interest on any extra money which a farmer might have to borrow for replacements, which money is readily available from banks or private finance companies to any progressive farmer who wants to avail of it.
Such an incentive would not be a big burden on the Exchequer and it would help enormously to wipe out the disease in the dairy herds where it is most prevalent and whence it is spreading to the young cattle. The cost would be infinitesimal and would more than compensate in the years to come when full accreditation will be of more vital importance than it is today. Undoubtedly, if we can get the dairy herds clear, the rest will be almost automatic. Co-operation between the farmers and the Department of Agriculture is essential—you can lead an Irishman but you cannot drive him. I believe an increase in the price of milk from certified T.B. free herds is the best encouragement farmers could get to speed up the eradication scheme. I suggest that a veterinary certificate to the creamery manager showing that all his dairy cows are free of the disease should entitle a farmer, if the Government put that scheme of incentives into operation, to get an extra price. I would say 2d or even 1d would be a great incentive.
We hear a lot about the deficit in our balance of payments and I should like to know what we are doing about that matter. Judging by our balance of trade with some European countries, we seem to be doing nothing. I have some figures for our trade with West Germany and they seem to me to be "cockeyed" in the extreme and completely one sided. The figure given for our exports to West Germany last year is £2,795,291. That figure includes a sum of £1,270,440 for beef which went to the American forces in Europe and which was paid for in American dollars and which should not be included in the statistics for exports to West Germany. That means a figure of £1,524,851 against a figure of £7,934,631 for imports from that country. That does not add up and it is a position which should not be allowed to continue.
There are virtually no restrictions on the volume of exports from West Germany to Ireland. Yet when a director of a large meat canning concern in this country went to Germany two weeks ago, expecting to sell some canned meat, for which there is a lucrative market there at present, he found that he would have no trouble selling it at a favourable price, but the West German Government would not give him a licence to import it. This firm has over £100,000 worth of canned meat in stock, and, in spite of all we are buying from Germany, they will not take the canned meat. There may be ten other firms here, for all I know, with large stocks.
I am led to believe that there are canning firms bursting at the seams with canned produce for which there is a market. That is true. There is a market in Germany, but the Germans will not accept it from us. We are buying wines and cars, including Mercedes cars, from Germany, but they will not buy our goods, according to the balance of exports and imports. I say that we should let the Germans keep their Mercedes and their wines and let us buy them from other countries which will buy our products. Then they might be more anxious to do business with us.
The same could be said to a lesser degree of other countries. From France, in 1958, we imported £3,157,748 worth of goods, while they took only £994,964. It is not as bad as Germany, but it is bad enough. Many of the goods we are buying from them are luxuries we do not need, such as champagne and perfumes. We had a lucrative market in France for lambs and the French stopped the import licences, saying they had not the money. Still, we are buying four times more from them.
If these bilateral trade agreements continue in this way, I do not see why we should spend so much money on trade representatives and staff in our embassies. Surely the function of our embassies is to see that we have equitable trading with such countries, instead of the lopsided trading I speak of. The situation is very unsatisfactory and I ask the Minister to look into it.
We hear a lot every day about the deficiency in the balance of payments, but it could not be otherwise when one firm with £100,000 worth of canned meat in stock went to Germany, where there is a good market and a better price than could be obtained in England, and was refused a licence to import. The Minister should look into this. If this trend is allowed to continue the country will be in "Queer Street" very soon.
After the spate of political discussion in both Houses during the past eight months, it is well that we are now coming back to discuss the economic aspect of our problems—to which we should have been devoting our serious attention during those months. I would suggest to the Seanad—and I hope the responsible Ministers will be agreeable—that we should discuss each month here some particular facet of our economic. social and national life.
We are afforded an opportunity of discussing on the Appropriation Bill everything arising under the various subheads. That means that there is far too much to be dealt with in a couple of days. It might be a more satisfactory arrangement if these matters could be dealt with by putting down agreed notices of motions so that the Minister dealing with each Department of State would be here for the purpose of hearing the views of the Seanad. It would mean using this second House in a way that might be of benefit to our economy. I speak in an entirely non-political way in this respect. I believe that world conditions have imposed upon the Government in charge of our affairs now more difficulties and a greater emergency in relation to our survival as a nation than have been imposed since the State was established in 1922.
There is a complete reorientation of ideas on trading. Senator Prendergast touched briefly on the amount we are out of balance in trading with other European countries. The present Committee which the Taoiseach has sitting to discuss with our neighbours in Britain our trade with that country, ought to be used to see that a proper balance is arrived at with our neighbours and with the other countries who are not purchasing reasonable amounts from us. We could use that as a counter in our bargaining with Britain, to see what favourable terms we can get in trading with our neighbours. It is not necessary to labour that point. We see here in Ireland motor cars and other equipment from behind the " Iron Curtain ", from countries which I am sure buy very little from us and which have very little in sympathy with us, either ideologically or otherwise.
The lowering of tariff barriers and the benefits—although I think they are over-exaggerated—given to the Danish economy by the recent trade agreement between Britain and the Scandinavian countries, are a challenge to us which ought to be met by every section of our community. I believe that if we could get our prices and our costs and our production right, we should not be afraid of any country in the world. Until we do so, until we become competitive, in the strict sense of the word, and until we become a low cost economy rather than an inflated cost economy, we shall not be in a position to compete with anybody. Every Government with the responsibility of looking after our affairs will be faced with these recurring problems of deficits in the balance of payments and we shall have demands from every section of our community.
While I am on that point, I want to mention—particularly as the Minister for Finance is in the House—that we seem to be particularly out of balance to-day. Senator McGuire, who is Chairman of the Federated Union of Employers, mentioned a speech made by Mr. John Conroy, when he attacked private enterprise and made a statement to the effect that he hoped those engaged in commerce and industry would not be so mean as to object to the injection of £200,000 to £300,000 per week into the economy in order that the workers might enjoy increased wages and improved conditions. I believe that if that money were injected into the economy maybe not in the short run but certainly in the long run, everybody would live in very much worse conditions.
I want to take the trade unionists also to task about one or two points. They seem to think, in Ireland, that the only people who need be responsible in these matters are the employers, that the employers have the burden and the duty of putting the case for the economy and that the trade union organisations should always look for more, whether or not it is to the benefit of the economy. When Mr. Conroy says that the trading, industrial and commercial community of this country are almost shabby because they might resist the devoting of £200,000 or £300,000 towards increasing wages and improving conditions, I believe he has not looked at the matter fairly. Only last week, figures were published by the Minister's Department which show that the adverse trade balance must now be causing the Minister a considerable amount of uneasiness.
The injection of that new money into this economy would only aggravate that condition and make the solution more difficult, and it would have the effect, in the long run, that everything here would cost more and everything we export would be still further priced out of the British market. Four years ago I was Mayor of Clonmel in the year in which the local boot factory was running a sample show. I was asked to attend in my capacity as Mayor and I was shown the very excellent samples of footwear which that firm had been exporting to Britain. They pointed out to me that a wage increase which had recently been granted made it more difficult for them to compete in Britain. The result of some of those increases has been that that industry is only half what it was three or four years ago.
I would be irresponsible, as a member of a Chamber of Commerce and as a person elected to the Seanad on the Industrial and Commercial Panel, if I did not state these things publicly and say that when employers oppose increases, they oppose them because they think they would not have a beneficial effect on the economy as a whole. If I may be permitted, I shall put what I believe is a simple analogy on our economy here. Our principal export is live cattle which are sold at world market prices and if one of those bullocks or heifers exported realises £50, that money would have a good purchasing power at home; if our taxation, our costs of running the country, and if everything we purchase at home, is at a reasonable level, everyone will be well off, because we have no opportunity of using any device whereby we can inflate that £50 which we import to make it twice as large.
Therefore, it behoves us, more than any other country, as we are compelled to accept the price which we receive for our agricultural production, to keep our home costs down. Today, it is costing us £150,000,000 a year to govern 3,000,000 people. If that figure could be reduced to a reasonable level, we would give far greater encouragement to industry and also to the people who are working in our community. The Ministers for Agriculture and Health are having trouble with the doctors and the veterinary surgeons at the present time about their salaries. It is not possible for us here in Ireland, where our income per head is about 60 per cent. of what it is in Britain, to pay these people as well, but there is no reason why our income tax should not be in the same ratio. If it is 8/- in the £ in Britain, it should be 5/- in the £ here and all the other allowances given in Britain ought to be on the same basis. Our rates, and our direct taxation should also be on the same basis. If they were, we could strike a balance where there would be very little complaint.
Senator McGuire also referred to the fact we were not providing a proper climate here for industry. I should like the Minister for Finance to ask his advisers—and he has some of the most competent, fertile and energetic brains in the country working in his Department—to investigate the reason industry in this country is not as progressive as we should all like to see it. As a person who has some experience of the smaller type of industries which are natural to this economy, I suggest that a private company has several disadvantages with regard to taxation and finances, and death duties and the other burdens laid on industry seem to be laid on the small type of industry which is the sort of industry which we would expect to have in this country. Our laws are archaic and they are taken from a big industrial country like Britain where most of the industries are public companies. No one has had the time or the energy—perhaps it is that the Minister for the time being has not directed their attention to it—to look into this question.
I know that what often happens in the case of a private company is that perhaps one of the large owners in that company dies and the impact of death duties is such that it has to be paid for many years and that industry then finds itself in difficulties. In passing, I should like to say that I think it is grossly irresponsible in Ireland that a tax like death duties is being spent as revenue rather than being channelled into investment. It is treated, in my opinion, on the wrong side of the line. If the Minister gets £2,000,000 by the dissipation of capital, in the interests of the economy, that money should be invested rather than fall to revenue. When it is taken from the estate perhaps capital has to be realised and then it is spent in a sort of rake's progress.
His Lordship, Dr. Lucey, has been, if you like, thundering in the wilderness about our economic affairs and also our Social affairs. We are not obliged, nor does His Lordship expect us, to agree with all the solutions that he has proposed to us from time to time. I believe he is motivated by sincerity and that what he says, he says as the pastor of his flock in County Cork. During the past couple of weeks, I have had an opportunity of living among country folk in Clare. I visited one parish—I think some other parishes in Tipperary may not be as bad but they may be somewhat like it—which is an example of what is happening in Ireland and which shows the necessity for a realisation that this Government are faced with a greater emergency than perhaps faced any other Government here. We have this change in trading conditions where our Commonwealth preferences and many of these things are not as beneficial to us as they were some years ago and where we will be required to stand on our own feet and become competitive.
I want to tell the House what happened in the parish of Feakle County Clare. In 1920, there was a population of 2,000 there. In 1957, the population was reduced, in round figures, to 1,100. On 124 holdings in that parish, there is no person under 40 years of age. In the Ayle electoral division, which is that division, there are only four girls of marriageable age. When we meet this sort of problem it gives us all furiously to think. I said to a Senator in the lobby that it looks as if the position is futile for the political Parties since it would be almost a matter of dogs fighting over bones only to find, when the fight had finished, that the bones were not there. It behoves each and every one of us in every political Party and group, including our great Civil Service, to see in what way our ranks can be closed to meet the challenge.
There is a much greater challenge today than ever there was during the Emergency. At that time we all joined up regardless of our political views or other affiliations to do what we could to preserve ourselves as an entity, so that the freedom for which our forbears were prepared to shed their blood if necessary, would be preserved, and translated into action.
There is a certain lack in us if we fail to avail of the opportunity given us to demonstrate that we can make Ireland a virile, strong, Christian democracy which will be a shining example to other countries and to demonstrate how we can govern ourselves. We have partly failed in that by the fact that we have wasted our time on futile discussions.
It would be well if this House took the opportunity each month to discuss some facet of our economic, social and national life and had present one of our Ministers and the officials of his Department to advise him on such occasions. Let us try in most respects to arrive, if we can, at an agreed solution of these problems. We appear in Ireland to be incapable of finding solutions by way of the ballot box. Maybe we might do more in Committee. If this House could be used for the purpose of finding these solutions, then the right solution for every problem should have general support.
From time to time we have had long debates on agriculture, our major industry. There was a great difference of opinion shown in these debates. If you were a member of one political Party you were supposed to be in favour of wheat-growing and if you were a member of another political Party you were supposed to be against it. May be there might be a middle-of-the-road course on such questions. I believe we are arriving at that situation but we ought to arrive at it quickly rather than have hard economic facts forced upon us.
I want to endorse Senator Burke's last plea that this House should have some better way of dealing with the Estimates than this composite debate in which we have the service of only one Minister, the Minister for Finance. Consequently, there is little use in raising questions of education, agriculture, and similar matters, because we cannot expect the Minister for Finance or his officers to reply to such questions.
I think perhaps we may in the coming session plan, as Senator Burke has suggested, a series of motions that would cover in effect the ground covered by the Estimates. If we could do that, we could make a useful and parallel contribution to the discussions in the Dáil in relation to these topics.
I think I should comment, as an Independent, respectfully, on the Trappist silence observed from the Government benches in the recent debate. The Finance Bill, the Export Bill—all these major Bills have gone through this House without a single contribution from the Government benches.
That is not true. I spoke the day before yesterday.
Not on the Finance Bill. I was here just as the debate concluded. I hope, in any case, the Government will not treat this occasion with the same lack of appreciation. I hope we shall hear contributions from other sides of the House. I think probably we may have the pleasure of hearing Senator Lenihan before this debate concludes.
In approaching this matter, it is well to acknowledge that we have come, we hope, to the parting of the ways. The first stage in our history as a nation is over, as one of the great figures of that period moves on to the Presidency. Now we have a new Government under Deputy Lemass as Taoiseach. We all join in wishing him well and every co-operation that we personally, as Independents, can give, we shall be only too pleased to give. We hope that any constructive criticism we may make will not be misinterpreted in the country as being intended to take any short advantage of the Government.
In this, our second phase which we will call the adult phase—the phase in which we are growing up as a nation —I should like that we would grow up and recognise that it is the hallmark of greatness for a man to be able to change his mind when the situation warrants it. I should be glad if we would get away from the petty 2½d. politics of quoting what a man said ten years ago and taking it that there is something degrading about the fact that he changes his mind. I hope that in two or three years' time we shall judge our present Taoiseach by that hallmark. I hope we shall be able to judge him by his ability to change his mind. I hope we shall judge the constructiveness of the Opposition by their restraint in refraining from making political capital out of such changes. If we can do that in three years' time then we can say we are well on the road to adult nationality.
In this change-over, too, I hope the opportunity will be taken to inquire why we are not doing better, why taxation is so high, and so on—in other words, to get to the root causes of our whole system of Government. I hope the Government will not be deterred by the fact that their recent effort to change the electoral system did not come off. There are many, many more root causes to be investigated. I hope we shall see before long a commission to go into those affairs. Although I am a member of this House for only a few years, nevertheless I feel the futility of all this speech-making.
What are we accomplishing? It is just that something is written, placed in the archives and put away on the shelves and 120 copies of the published report are available in the Stationery Office for sale to the public and are usually not sold. That seems just the same service, one almost feels, as one would give in a University debating society. I hope we shall see a change in all that, the change suggested by Senator Burke. I hope many motions will be debated here, and that, as in any democratic country, we shall get down to a constructive system of Committees—an Agricultural Committee, an Educational Committee, and so on —in which we can all meet and hammer out the solution as we all see it and thereby be a great help to the Minister and his Department.
The Committee System is the hallmark of advancing and developing democracy. We see it in the United States. Recently I had the pleasure and privilege of studying it first-hand in Holland where I was amazed at the extent to which their work is done by Committees. A Committee meets at any time and calls in the appropriate Minister and suggests: "We should like to discuss such and such a topic." On the other hand, a Minister may call a Committee together and say: "I should like the Committee to consider such and such a proposal." When he is preparing a Bill, he will go to the Committee. The Committee studies the proposals of the Bill and then issues a written report to the Minister setting out suggestions for the improvement of the Bill, why it disagrees with certain things in the Bill, and so on. In turn, the Minister and his advisers prepare another report—written, again —which sets out the Minister's reply to these points. After that, the Bill goes to the House and passes through expeditiously. The work is done in the Committees where it should naturally be done.
If these systems were introduced here I think I and most other Senators would view with far more favour the amounts spent on Dáil Éireann in Vote 2 and on Seanad Éireann. In fact, we would consider the money well spent. We think the time has come to extend that system enormously to ensure the standing principle that nobody will lose by taking an active part in public life.
At present, the vast bulk of our citizens, those in positions each earning more than £600 a year, are excluded, one might almost say, from membership of either House of the Oireachtas because they simply cannot undertake the financial sacrifice required. They should not be asked to undertake it. I do not suggest for a moment that the Government should be made up altogether of those classes. The present composition forms a very valuable and fine part of an Assembly but it is wrong that the other class should be excluded altogether.
I would welcome the day when, say, a local agricultural officer, a local engineer or a clerk in the local county council would decide to go forward. In Holland, even civil servants are facilitated to go forward. I met one official of the Department of Agriculture in Holland who had been on leave from his Department for five years and who took a very active part in the political life of the country. They pay a decent system of allowances there— £1,500 which is worth about the same amount here. They have stepped it up from £500 pre-war to £1,500 to-day and they are being very realistic.
If you are in any paid position and earning more than you would get in public life then your body, whether it be the Civil Service, corporation, county council or anything else, makes up the difference. That would be a very distinct step forward here. It is a poor tribute to the Dáil that it has not the courage to pay proper allowances to its Deputies. If much more use were made of the Seanad it could perhaps warrant increased allowances but, at the present level of activity, the allowances are more than adequate though I admit the Seanad gave good value for its money in its contribution on the proposal to amend the Constitution.
On the question of bringing down public expenditure, one other thing that needs to be cut out very much are those circuses such as we have had this week, the by-elections. It is rather strange that in European countries there is no need for such circuses. The method of P.R. is sufficiently elastic to do all that work at one stage. In the list system, the Party are entitled to five seats and if one dies the next man on the list steps in. In a system such as we have here, all you have to do is simply to retain the votes and if a person dies then go over his votes, eliminate him, pass on the votes and elect the next man. It is almost 90 per cent. certain that the next man is the man put up by the Party elected. That would be a means of avoiding a certain amount of expenditure. Above all, it would give stability of government. It would prevent these by-elections from distracting Governments at a time when they should be occupied with other work.
I wish to emphasise again that I hope we shall judge our Taoiseach in three years' time by the number of occasions on which he changed past policies that have not simply produced the goods. I hope he will have the courage, the ability, and the foresight to make whatever changes are necessary and that we shall have no petty political point-scoring by the Opposition when he does so, when his reasons are good and soundly given.
That brings me to the major section of our policy, and it is connected with our expenditure. I hope our Government will investigate very carefully in the months ahead what I might call our disastrous foreign policy—a policy in which both Parties share the blame. We had this isolationism that began out of the last war but which led us in 1948 to our totally unrealistic stand on N.A.T.O. We do not want point-scoring on it. I hope we shall now get down to review the situation and, without recrimination by any Party, realise that ten years afterwards the position may appear different. Let the Parties study it. I hope that as we are striving so hard for economic integration with Europe and endeavouring to get into various markets such as the Common Market, and so on, and see the advantages of it, we shall realise that we shall not share in the economic advantages of Europe if we are not prepared to play our part in the defence of Europe as well. Therefore, I appeal strongly that we reverse our stand and line up with N.A.T.O.
That brings me to the other side of the question where we pursued an equally disastrous policy in the United Nations. For two years we have gone against all our friends. We have gone against all reason and logic in our stand as to whether the admission of Communist China should or should not be discussed. I appeal strongly to the new Government not to feel in any way tied by the past, which is gone. We all make mistakes. Our Foreign Office may have made mistakes. Let us face the future with confidence but let us not persist in remaining stubbornly in our mistakes. The first time two years ago when we voted upon that issue, it might be dismissed as very ill-judged and very much of a mistake but, perhaps, a major blunder that might be pardoned to an over-enthusiastic and inexperienced country making its debut at U.N.O.
Last September, I happened to be in the United States myself. Never was I more mortified as an Irishman than then. I did not defend what we did. I could not do it. It was indefensible. You had the question of Quemoy twelve miles off the coast of China. The whole issue there was whether the rule of law should prevail or not. The whole question was in the balance. The guns of Red China were turned upon that island.
Every fellow-traveller in the United States howled for the blood of Mr. Dulles at that period. The whole matter was on the brink and it was called Brinkmanship. The Brinkmanship that was there was not so much the Brinkmanship that called the bluff of Communist China but in the United States, whether Mr. Dulles would remain as Secretary. It only needed to give a forum to Communist China in the heart of the United States to pour out its propaganda to overwhelm Mr. Dulles and cause Mr. Dulles, Quemoy and the Free World all to go down in the catastrophe.
I do not wish to go into the matter in any great detail. I do not think we should belabour the present Government. I am prepared to recognise that we have a change of Government. It is a new Government and I prefer to take the Taoiseach on his statement that they have not yet considered the admission of Red China. The resolution of India is on the way again for debate in September. Please God, when September comes, I hope we shall have the foresight to recognise tacitly that we made a mistake. The events in Tibet may have convinced us that Communist China does not obey the rule of law and their pledges cannot be accepted as entitling them to admission to any body that expects to enforce the rule of law.
I hope that the Tibet crisis will convince the Minister for External Affairs that the idea of making good boys of the Chinese is still very much in the distant future. I hope that, when next September comes, he will be there and that he will be there in company with our friends because the last time we were in company with Russia and her satellites. Let me read the list of those who voted for putting the question of the admission of Red China on the agenda:—
"Ireland, Russia, Romania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan, Albania, Bulgaria, Burma, Byelo-Russia, Cambodia, Ceylon, Denmark, Finland, Ghana, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Sudan, Iraq, Morocco, Nepal, Norway, Sweden, Ukraine, United Arab Republic, Yemen, Yugoslavia.
All the countries that we should value most, like Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Italy——
Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
Italy, Spain, France and England were all against us. Do not let us rush into a hasty decision. I hope we shall be applauding a reversal of this disastrous policy next September.
Where did the Senator put Spain?
Spain was against us, as you would expect from any country with a Christian tradition and outlook.
Or any belief in God.
We are all atheists then, are we?
I am very sorry that we have not really a debate on foreign policy, although I feel it is just as well in so far as the foreign policy of the Government is only now in its beginning period. It is a new Government and we shall judge its policy during the next session.
We come to another item which I must take up here—Vote 49. It is an item I raised last March but in view of the rather unsatisfactory reply the Minister for Finance gave on that day, I shall raise it again. It is is this question of our agricultural schools and the gross discrimination being practised by the State against non-State schools. It is something that is not democratic or just.
With regard to Vote 49, it is rather difficult to extract the true figures because in connection with State-supported schools like Ballyhaise, Clonakilty and Athenry, there are many items which do not appear. They appear under other Votes: contributions from the Board of Works, Stationery Office, the pensions of officers serving and so on. When you make a rough allowance for those and when you take the appropriations-in-aid, the value of farm produce sold and so on, you find that we spent roughly £25,000 on Ballyhaise, £25,000 on Athenry and about £18,000 on Clonakilty.
I do not say for a moment that this is too high. In fact, it is not half enough for the work of training young farmers but in regard to the private schools, which Senators know, Pallaskenry, St. Columba's Warrenstown, Gurteen and so on, the total expenditure, capitation grant and everything else, is not more than £26,000 or £28,000, as much as is spent on one State school.
If you take it on a student basis, it costs 10 times as much to educate a student in a state agricultural school as in one of our private schools. We condemn private enterprise and we say that it has let down the country, but it is we who have let down private enterprise—certainly that type of private enterprise. Let us take note of the communities who run these schools; the Fathers running Pallaskenry, Warrenstown or the Methodist Church Body running Gurteen. You might regard them as the most efficient nationalisers we have in the country in so far as they are conserving the national wealth and any money put in by the State or provided in fees or otherwise is not used on luxury spending by those in charge of those institutions.
It was a revelation to me on my recent visit to Holland to find how they deal with the problem there of the private school versus the other schools. They actually compute at the end of the year what it costs to educate a student in one of the State schools. They add in everything that is concealed. I mentioned some of those things—the Stationery Office, establishment and so on. They then compute the exact cost of keeping a student for a year, and they pay the private schools that exact sum for every student on the rolls. That is equality and it has proved itself in the very high standard of education they have got for their young farmers.
An interesting sidelight on that is that when the Germans came into Holland, they decided that they did not believe in giving out money to religious orders and others running private schools and they cut the allowance drastically. To the credit of the Dutch Government, that was one of the first things they restored when they got rid of the occupation forces. I hope that we shall repair that gross injustice which has persisted throughout the years. I had hoped, as I promised in March, to give this matter more study, and certainly before the year is finished, I hope, with the help of the various bodies concerned, to prepare a full document showing clearly how badly treated they are. Remember that £250,000 would cover the whole lot and if we gave that extra money to those seven schools, I can guarantee that it would be the greatest investment we could make in Irish agriculture.
There is something like £11,000 for rural organisations like Macra na Feirme, Muintir na Tíre and the Irish Countrywomen's Association. That money is provided by the American grant which is due to expire within a year or two. I hope the Government will see fit to make that a permanent contribution and also see fit to raise it up to a realistic sum to encourage those organisations in the second phase of their growth. The first phase has gone, that of organising, getting the people banded together and getting them to appreciate the co-operative spirit of unity.
The second stage is much more difficult. It is the task of really doing a good educational job with those people, running the night schools and getting the people to attend them on two or three nights a week. In the Budget, the Minister remitted the tax on dancing. I suggest that this remission was unnecessary. Another 6d. or 1/- would have no influence on the people who go dancing. The tax on dances should be increased to its previous level and the money should be used to finance our local organisations I think those going dancing would be very pleased to find their contributions were being used in that way: young people financing young people.
Then there was the tax which was taken off games. Again, I think that was totally unnecessary. Anybody who goes to the trouble of travelling miles to see a game will not be deterred by another 6d. or 1/- on the price of the ticket. I suggest that there is a great need for community centres and especially playing pitches attached to our national schools. In the next Budget, the Minister should consider putting a tax on all games, G.A.A. and otherwise, to be devoted specifically to providing playing pitches for our national schools.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
I do not think the Senator is quite in order in advocating taxation on two counts.
Well, we make the suggestion. We come then to the Vote for Agriculture. There are so many heads in this that it is hard to select only a few items, but I take the item dealing with subsidies on dairy produce, which is being reduced from £1,400,000 to £1 million. That £1 million is to provide one of the millions the Minister used in his Budget for over-estimation because it is not to be used in this year's finances. It is deplorable to think that the dairy farmers, who have had such hard times, whose production is down and whose cows are not milking as well, now find that the amount the State is giving them is to be decreased also.
A sum of £700,000 will probably be raised by the levy. Every section of the community has received an increase to compensate for the increased cost of living over the past few years, except the dairy farmers. They have gone down and down and we are paying the penalty because this year the production of butter is down. Last year we wished that we would never see butter again, it was costing the Exchequer so much to export. What is the picture this year? If we had it, what a contribution it would make with butter making 350/- to 380/- a cwt. on the British market. We took fright and were discouraged because it went down for one, or at most two years. Surely if we are planning any agricultural policy, we shall have to take the rough with the smooth. I appeal, before it is too late, that something be done for the dairy farmers, unless we want the country converted into a ranch, because the dairy farmers are the backbone of the country, the small farmers from whom the best citizens come. Surely our growing children are the greatest concern of the country.
Another point I would make is that the time has come to differentiate between the small farmer and the other farmers. In other words, if the State is forced to impose a penalty like this levy, then it should not be put on the small farmer. Surely he deserves preferential treatment because he is producing more per acre than the large farmer. That has been shown in the Farm Survey. Consequently, he is extracting more wealth per acre for the country and he deserves consideration. We have to pin our hopes on the small farms and on the dairy farms which are the backbone of the country.
On the question of bovine tuberculosis, I would appeal again that special consideration be given to the small farmer. If these small farmers were industrialists and if they were banded together and if they said: " We will extend our plant and produce twice as much, " then the State would rush in with grants and everything else to assist them. Recently, we had a factory opened which cost £19,000 and the State provided £12,000 by way of grant. Two pounds out of every three pounds was put up by the State. The ordinary small farmer with his six cows can carry another four but will the State be as generous with him as it is with our industrialists? Certainly if the State would only pour some of the money which it is pouring into industry into the small farms instead, then we would quickly solve our economic problems. If we had the produce, we would solve the marketing problem as well.
Again, returning to the bovine tuberculosis scheme and the huge cost of £3½ million, I think that before long we should have a special Government commission to investigate what is happening because we are not making progress. We are making it on paper but if we ask anybody down the country, he will say that the whole thing is becoming a racket. I hope the Government will get some small, efficient body, like the Investment Committee, a body of four or five, which will quickly get down and issue a report as to whether we are progressing or not, or whether we are merely creating employment for some veterinary surgeons but in no way reducing our incidence of disease. If we succeed in solving this one, there are two or three other diseases lined up, ready to be eliminated also. There is brucollis, which was brought to our attention by the shipment of pedigree cattle which went to the United States. That is the next on the list; there are two or three others. We will be testing animals in saecula saeculorum if the present views on animal health prevail.
If the present views on animal health were applied to our human population, we would have already eliminated 95 per cent of us as reactors who should not be allowed to live. I urge seriously that we may have to make a drastic change in our approach to the T.B. business. I believe—and many veterinary surgeons I have spoken to agree with me—that the possibilities of vaccination have not been explored sufficiently. It would be a far easier task to carry out. If we want to sell our products abroad and if we could say that they came from T.B. vaccinated cattle, that should be good enough to sell our products to T.B. vaccinated people.
All the panic in this is created by the store trade. As things are, they are not going too happily now in the store trade, as we see from the reports of the Dublin cattle market. Look at our balance of payments and see the gap there, due to the lower level of cattle prices this year. I suggest the present structure is a healthier one, where the store animal is making the same as, or a little more than, the finished animal. If we are to expand, the cattle side of our economy will have to be of beef, the finished product because the British market can absorb only a very limited number of store cattle. Take, for instance, the number it absorbed last year; does anyone seriously think that it could absorb double that number? Yet we plan to double our numbers in the next 15 years or less. Therefore, if we are to have a future, it would depend on finishing our product and the store is only a by-product to be sold as the British market wants. The long-term national policy must be based on dairy products and on finished beef. If that is the case, it puts a different complexion on the T.B. business.
I suggest to the Minister and the Government that, on account of the big expenditure involved, there should be a Government commission of four or five men, to conduct a quick, penetrating inquiry into this business, to let us know where we are going, since at present nobody knows that.
We come to indirect taxation and find the burden reflected in the amount for health services. We are over the initial phase in that, and again it is time this new Government at the second stage of our development, appointed a commission, with the assistance of some outside people, to have a quick and detailed survey of our present health system and let us know where we are going. When this scheme was brought in, we were promised that the rates would not increase more than 2/6d in the £. Already they have gone to 7/- or 8/- for health and they are climbing rapidly. That is another cause of large expenditure which could profitably be investigated by the Government.
As a University representative, I must protest, on behalf of the graduates, against the unreasonable attitude taken by the Minister for Health to Dr. Hurley in Cork. It appears to have been a case of starving a man and, when he is down, laughing at him because he is weak. I suggest that to be condemned in the Dáil by the Minister for Health was a treatment to which no other citizen is subjected. If we are charged, we can go to the Court but this doctor—who has given a very exhaustive account of the handicaps he was under at the time—was made the object of public criticism in the Dáil. That is a wrong approach and does not help the relations between the Government and the professional bodies. I welcome the Minister's meeting with the I.M.A.; and I say it is two years too late, but better late than never. I hope that, in the future, we shall have less irresponsible criticism and much more co-operation with professional bodies.
Business suspended at 6 p.m. and resumed at 7 p.m.
Coming to the Vote for the Department of Industry and Commerce, I feel that Department must widen its horizons considerably. Perhaps we may expect that now, seeing that it has been divided. For instance, the main attraction, or one of the big attractions of this country, is as a place to live in, and I feel that the Department might now make a drive to encourage retired people to come and live here. I know there are many Irish-Americans who would willingly come here, provided we arranged suitable groupings and, in general, make life attractive for them. We must realise that a retired pensioner from abroad who brings in £700 or £800 is actually as valuable to the community as one or even two workers placed in an Irish industry. It takes from £3,000 to £6,000 to place a worker in industry at present. If we look at this new type of what I might call permanent tourism, we can see we might well invest considerable sums in it.
I think we should be encouraged by the recent statement of the Taoiseach in the Dáil. In defending the proposed expenditure of £5½ million in buying new jets, he simply waved his hand and said there was as much more for any other project that was capable of being a financial success. If that is the case, I commend to the Department the study of the establishment of settlements here.
I believe that the Department might well look to our educational institutions here and might see in those the means of attracting a considerable number of foreign students, both at secondary and university level. Again, these students could make a most important contribution to our economy and later on they would be invaluable ambassadors of this country abroad. I think we should try to establish this country as a restful place to live in the modern world and with jet traffic and all the rest that should be quite possible to attain.
I do not intend to speak on this jet service because we shall have an opportunity next week to weigh up its pros and cons. All I would say is that if we are committed to it and if we are to have it, then that also would tie in very well with attracting permanent tourists from abroad, especially from the United States, either as retired people or as university students because jet transport concessions could be given to them during the off-season.
There is just one other item that I find is not included in the Estimates. It is the question of farm apprenticeship. I should have thought that after two-and-a-half years' study, the Government would have progressed much further with this most necessary step. It is well over 12 months now since extended negotiations were carried on by the Minister with the representatives of the farming organisations. I think the stage has come when we should really push ahead and do something in this project because it aims at turning back on to the land the best of our young men and surely that is a most urgent necessity, if we are to increase agricultural production. I hope when the Estimate comes next year we shall see a sum for this purpose there. I hope it might almost equal the sum we are spending on jets. Certainly it would be a most valuable investment for the country.
I shall deal now with the industrial drive. I am afraid we are rather dissatisfied with the response the country is making. We are not getting ahead in a way in which one would expect from the magnitude of Government spending on industry. I would make one suggestion in passing. There seems to be one important element missing from our industrial drive, that is, the contribution of the local labour force. If an industry is proposed for, let us say, Midleton, or any such town, the Government are prepared to give generous grants and the local people are usually able to put up a certain amount of capital, but what is missing, I think, is the contribution of local labour.
Labour living in a big city, such as London, take at least an hour a day travelling, if not more. In Dublin, many labourers are probably not far from that figure. I should like to see, as a contribution to our industrial drive, organised labour recognising that labour outside of Dublin might at least contribute the travelling time that is expended. Say that an hour a day is the travelling time in Dublin and other such places, would labour in the towns of Ireland give one hour extra per day in recognition of that? Perhaps you might not require that should be given free, but it might be given charged at half the regular rate and given as a contribution towards the financing of industry, thereby taking a practical step towards worker participation in providing capital for our industries. There is some element missing in our industrial drive. What is it?
It is a healthy sign that many of the professions are beginning to try to see what they can do outside the limits of their professions to help the country. This afternoon, I had the very pleasant experience to be present at the Press conference given by the Engineers Association of Ireland—Cumann na hInnealltóirí—where they released the publication of the results of a two-year study report of the national advisory group of the Association. This was a study by a committee set up by the organisation to see what contribution the engineers as a profession could make towards solving our economic problems or at least towards broadening the contribution that engineers can make to our economic life.
In this study, on which I do not intend to dwell at length, they have, in effect, three separate studies. The first is an engineering appraisal of industry based on agriculture; the second is an engineering appraisal of our present drainage effort; and the third a critical analysis of Irish industry and technical progress. This shows that Irish industry is very deficient in the number of technologists and the possible number of technicians it employs in its factories. This estimate is a very positive contribution. I hope in this our second development stage in self-government, that in the drive ahead we may be able to have the support of many of the professional groups and get them to go outside their narrow professional fields and make a greater contribution to our industrial drive.
There is, it appears, too much of a gap between our thinking on agriculture and our thinking on industry—a feeling that the two are mutually antagonistic, that the money we give to agriculture is lost to industry and that we are giving too much to industry and not enough to agriculture. Actually, there is need for a clear appreciation of the interdependence of the two. While we may give lip-service to that, we need to see it set down in figures.
I have been making an attempt recently by means of an operations research approach to try to get some quantitative measure of the interdependence of the two. It can be said, I think, that you can show that the benefit to the rest of the community does not come simply by the lowering of agricultural prices, by cheaper food. It comes from the fact that if you have increased agricultural production, the farmer has more to spend. The workers on the land have more to spend. They buy the products of our industries. Consequently, the workers in our industries have more to spend and new workers are placed in industry. Again, considerable processing is called for which creates additional industrial effects, and it is from those secondary effects that the prosperity flows to the non-agricultural section of the community.
In fact, the calculation has been made that gives what to me is an astonishing result—and I should like to conclude on it—and that is that a 6 per cent. increase in agricultural production per annum—six per cent. is a good target but not impossible— would in a matter of ten years not only increase our total agricultural output by 75 per cent., but would increase our total industrial output by from £400,000,000 to £630,000,000. In other words, it would create an increase of almost 55 per cent. in industrial output, a 4½ per cent. per annum increase. The two almost keep step.
Again, it is not always realised, or appreciated, that increased prosperity at home will consume much of our increased agricultural production. On these figures, almost 40 per cent would be consumed at home. If we hit the target of a six per cent. increase in agricultural production that would call for an increase in exports of £100,000,000 over ten years. That may appear a frightening figure but, if one breaks it down, it only means an increase of 6½ per cent. per annum in exports. Surely, if we can not put up an organisation capable of expanding to the extent of 6½ per cent. per annum, we are defeated before ever we begin. In other words, let us not advance the excuse that we cannot sell. If we produce the goods, we can sell. If we unite and take advantage of this new phase, this second stage in our development which is beginning now, and give the Government and the Taoiseach our wholehearted support, we shall find ourselves on the threshold, as the Taoiseach put it, of a great break through.
I shall end as I began: if we are to make that break through, we must be prepared to change our minds. Rather than criticise any public man for changing his mind, we should applaud him every time he does so. We should applaud our Taoiseach when he changes his mind. We should applaud the Government when they change their minds, change them because of hard objective facts. The first change we shall applaud in that direction will be a change in our disastrous foreign policy.
I promised the House on the Central Fund Bill that I would say something about the capital programme, State companies and the manner in which they are operated, together with the philosophy which, I think, seems to be guiding the Taoiseach in his approach to them. Portion of what I had to say on that, I said on the Finance Bill. I shall say the remainder of it now.
It might be no harm for me to say something on a topic which has been adverted to on many occasions. Our social capital expenditure is now nearing its end. There are certain aspects of it, however, which are not approaching finality. I would describe them under the category of general economic capital expenditure which is really social in its nature. For example, the forestry programme is carrying a load of social forestry which is really not proper for charge against the forestry programme at all. It may be that, in the long run, the results of the forestry programme will not be as good as they might otherwise have been were it not for the planting of trees on unsuitable mountainsides and along the periphery of the Atlantic. But these are really only incidental points. There is, too, a good deal of primary school building still to be completed, though I sometimes think the case in that regard is exaggerated: wherever I go in the country new national schools are very noticeable indeed.
As far as hospitalisation and housing go, the work is practically complete. That is why I wonder if the figures published in the Programme for Economic Expansion in relation to that aspect of our economy are, in fact, correct. Last year the forecasts in relation to the Budget from the point of view of expenditure from the Local Loans Fund were not borne out by what happened subsequently. Expenditure was less than that forecast. I can quite understand why certain forecasts should be made from the point of view of purely political reasons. In that context, one remembers the campaign carried on in 1956 with regard to housing.
That kind of campaign does not pay in the City of Dublin. That has been proved. With regard to State organisations, the idea seems to have got abroad that they are entitled to get all the money they require by just asking for it. Not alone that, but they are not to be asked to pay even the minimum rate of interest on the moneys made available to them. They go still further when they require new capital expenditure they expect to get new capital for it. In other words, they do not make proper provision for depreciation or proper amortisation arrangements. Such a situation is fantastic. Imagine a big organisation which, not alone does not pay any interest on the money it gets, does not repay any of the capital, but comes back to "Pappa"—namely, the State— every time they require fresh capital. Now, the money "Pappa" gives them is public money. The public has to pay. There might be methods by which the public might operate in order not to pay. But that is not popular in Ireland. We are a very austere community in that particular territory. It is a bit ludicrous, to say the least of it, that inside this community, which is so very austere about the methods of making capital available, we should have that situation. There are more methods of making capital available, despite the opinions held by certain economists, just as there are more methods than one of solving economic problems.
Frequently I hear people say, and particularly in the last seven or eight years: "Oh, there is only one way we can do it ". The moment I hear that I know immediately that the person speaking is wrong. There are several ways of approaching any problem, either financial or economic, just as there are several ways of building a house or moving a mountain. There are several ways of doing anything.
From the capital point of view, the Electricity Supply Board is quite the largest in that particular sphere. Nobody could object to the manner in which the finances of the Electricity Supply Board have been conducted. Some citizens have a just grievance about entry into their houses but, from the overall point of view, vis-a-vis the community, the Electricity Supply Board has made proper arrangements with regard to its finances.
In the case of a body linked with the Electricity Supply Board—that is, Bord na Móna—they can get additional approval. Last year, however, there would undoubtedly have been a financial débácle for which the State Board would have been in no way responsible. In that context, I should like to comment on a statement made here by the Taoiseach the other evening. Speaking on the new Ministry of Power and Transport he said in answer to a criticism of mine that the Electricity Supply Board had at present about one quarter more installed generating capacity than was required, that last winter the Electricity Supply Board required it all. Of course they did. Not a unit of electricity was being produced on the turf generating stations. The Taoiseach takes an abnormal winter when they had not one ounce of milled peat and says that the Board told him they required all the electricity they had. Regrettably, that is typical of the kind of statement the Taoiseach is prepared to make in debate. I do not say it is typical of the way he conducts the affairs of the country. The fact is the greatest criticism that can be levelled at the Electricity Supply Board is that they have this excess capital installation.
No amount of twisting of the figures, or anything else, will alter the fact that the basic installation of the E.S.B. is £15,000,000, or one-quarter, in excess. If I say £12 million I am understating it because the recent installations cost more than the earlier ones. No amount of twisting will get out of that. That will right itself with time but there is substantial loss to the community because capital has been said to be scarce in recent times. There were times when it was said that the Government of this country was "bust". In fact, it was said recently in by-elections down the country, well away from the newspaper reporters, as far as possible, or well away from the populated places. I heard it, in connection with the referendum, in Carrick-on-Suir. I heard it from a very senior Minister in a small village in County Meath last Sunday.
When you have that kind of situation, it is just not good enough to pass by this excess installation of power but the man responsible for that was the present Taoiseach. He called up the Electricity Supply Board and told them that they would have to do certain things, and when he speaks, as he did, about the Board of Aer Lingus putting certain propositions to him about the transatlantic service, I hope it was not in the same kind of way as was done in relation to the E.S.B., because the history of the E.S.B. incident is well known now.
We take another large part of this capital expenditure, the Local Loans Fund. It always has been my opinion that the Local Loans Fund paid for itself to a much greater extent than was allowed by the critics of the housing programme. If we take another item, which does not come in so perfectly, the capital for the telephone system also pays for itself. Power, telephones, housing. Then you get into smaller companies like the Dairy Disposals Company. Ever since the start of the war period, the people running the Dairy Disposals Company have been quite prepared to pay interest on their capital, and it was generally agreed that they would put the money to the development of their operations rather than pay it in and get it back, and that kind of thing. Again, I see no objection to their arrangement. Similarly the Industrial Credit Company has a good record and the Agricultural Credit Corporation has an excellent record. Perhaps, from the point of view of the agricultural community it would be better if it had not quite such an excellent record.
Therefore, when you examine the picture as a whole from a financial point of view, as I mentioned when speaking on the Finance Bill, the part of the whole capital programme which has shown worst results financially is, undoubtedly, the transport end of it— that is, the C.I.E., the air companies and also, in recent times, and very likely to get worse in future, Irish Shipping. But, when we look at the main part of the proposals which are now put forward by the Government, what do we find? We find that a great deal of the money which it is proposed to make available through the State for capital purposes is going into these very companies. The capital of Aer Rianta, that is the holding company, if my recollection is correct, is being increased by £8 million. The capital of Irish Shipping is being increased from £2 million to £10 million. The Industrial Credit Company's capital is also being increased substantially.
There are two warnings from the past in relation to the Industrial Credit Company. They had a great many investments at the outbreak of war which subsequently, owing to the circumstances that arose during the war, paid for themselves but at the time they were certainly frozen up and might be regarded as frozen assets. They subsequently developed a fairly sizable bunch of frozen assets in the immediate post-war period, say, when the expansion began, from I suppose 1949 to 1952. One does not mention the companies concerned but many of the investments are still frozen, that is to say, they put large investments into certain companies out of which they have got no dividend and, because of the position in relation to the shares, they cannot realise them. I am afraid we are in for another period of that sort in relation to the Industrial Credit Company and the reticence about making information available to the Oireachtas bears that out to some extent.
Bord Iascaigh Mhara is to get £3 million. I think it is a modest enough investment in something which may not pay for itself but which, at least, should be tried out. It is quite modest There is £1 million for Córas Tráchtála Teoranta. I noticed yesterday there was a good deal of praise for the operation of Córas Tráchtála. I would not criticise them for their efforts but I do not know that their efforts have been very successful. The proof of that is simply that, in a period when our export prices have been going up and import prices have been falling, our balance of payments has been going adverse. That rather suggests that Córas Tráchtála has not been extremely successful.
I come on to a matter to which I have referred on a number of occasions here and to which it gives me great pleasure to refer again. I want to speak about the reference in the Central Bank Report and to the figures published by the Central Statistics Office in relation to our balance of payments. At long last, at the end of a very long road, the view which I expressed many times was vindicated this very last year, so completely vindicated, that there is not a word left to them to say about the subject. What is it? It is this: I have just added up the total of the adverse balance of payments issued by the Central Statistics Office, disclosed year after year in the Central Bank Report with a long commentary on them, and the total is as follows: For the year 1947, £29.8 million; 1948, £19.7. million; 1949, £9.6 million; 1950, £30.2 million; 1951, £61.6 million; 1952, £8.9 million; 1953, £7 million; 1954, £5.5 million; 1955, £35.5 million; 1956, £14.4. million; 1957, a credit balance of £9.2 million as revised; originally published at £7 million, now £9.2 million; and for the year 1958, again an adverse balance of £1 million. That makes a total of adverse balances amounting to £232 million, a credit balance of £9 million, leaving a net deficit in the balance of payments of £214 million.
One would have thought that it was up to somebody, the people who produce these figures, to show where this £214 million came from. There is only one place it could have come from, primarily, that is, by draws on the liquid assets of our banking system. What is the position about the liquid assets of our banking system? On the 31st December, 1946, they amounted to £233.7 million; on the 31st December, 1958, to £205.8 million, a difference of £28 million, so that £28 million has to be expanded to make it £214 million.
Where can one go for it? You can go to one item only for it that is concrete and established—the £40 million of the American loan which was raised under Marshall Aid. So, you have £40 million and £28 million, that is £68 million, and there is £150 million to be accounted for. Of course, people who held shares abroad, say, in industrial securities in England, might have realised them. It is a very big "might". I could not imagine many people from this country realising industrial shares in England in the last decade. That is one item. There might have been big investments of capital or big subscriptions to our national loans from abroad. There was no such thing. I worked it out without any great difficulty and I was glad my results were confirmed subsequently by more expert people as to what the subscriptions were yearly. £15 million came in from abroad for our National Loans. I got the figure by a process of my own, but I was glad that it was confirmed by people who had access to the necessary information.
There was no explanation for this but there was another point about it which gave me still greater pleasure. My amusement was considerably increased when the Central Statistics Office last year attempted to show—and it was published in the Economic Statistics prior to the Budget —that in a year in which our trade position deteriorated by £14 million, they attempted to explain away how it was that our commercial banks and the Central Bank between them accumulated £16.6 million in London. There was something approaching £30 million to be explained away.
They started off by saying that we got in £2 million or £3 million from tourism. Let us look at the year 1958. It was the worst year Ireland had climatically and yet they had the hard neck to suggest that receipts from tourism were up by £3 million. That was also the year in which the Centenary of Lourdes occurred. Yet they said that net receipts from tourism were up by £3 million. They also showed a huge increase in our receipts in interest from investments abroad. I know how investments abroad have been paying in recent years. It may well be that if you compare last year with the four or five previous years there might be a very large increase. There was a very big increase in dividends when the Conservative Government in Britain took the ceiling off profits. That meant that certain large companies, that had made substantial profits since the war, pushed up their dividends.
These people succeeded in reducing the difference to £17.7 million and the explanation then given was that there was foreign investment in this country to the total of £17.7 million. Whenever I hear a figure like that, I think of the kind of foreign investment made in this country. There is a little of it in National Loans but the bulk is made by external companies which put it into their own operations here, and there is no great difficulty in tracking it. There was one obvious one, the refinery at Whitegate, on which the statisticians went to town. They said that the great bulk of the investment in that refinery came in 1958, but I thought of the time it took to build the refinery and of the contracts that had to be made in connection with it. I also thought that the oil companies might make great payments in advance because of fear of war, but, when you have said that, I understand that the figure suggested as the cost of the refinery was £12 million and now it is suggested that £8 million of that came into the country last year, in one year alone. That may be the case but I am very sceptical about it. Even if you accept that £8 million, there is still very nearly £10 million to be explained away, and there is no rational explanation of it.
It might be that those people who thought the country was going bankrupt in 1956 could not make up their minds that the country had been saved until 1958, and then brought back their money from the banks where they had left it, the National City Bank in New York and in different trust companies.
That is just what happened.
It might be the case but you would want to be a very credulous individual to believe it. I would have a great deal more respect for the people concerned with the preparation of these statistics if they came out honestly and said: "We were wrong; we overpainted the picture." Of course they did, but in a different way. They came out, on the one hand, saying they had been over-painting the picture, but on the other. that their figures were right, and they were standing over them. Even allowing for every possible explanation, there is a great deal to be explained.
The Central Bank, at a time when the balance of payments position was visibly deteriorating, produced a report giving a painting that was a little bit of black, and then painting a double or treble white coat over it. I could quote several paragraphs from it but I will not inflict them on the House, showing this thing being done, painting on-black and four or five coats of white over it.
I am only interested in this as being a complete change of heart on the part of the Central Bank. Why is there this change of heart?
You mean it vexes you? You are vexed about it.
I am not a bit vexed about it.
I am afraid you are.
After all, it is not as if I suddenly conjured up an interest in this matter.
You seem to be very vexed with this change of heart.
It is the tone of the Central Bank Report about which I am vexed.
Exactly—the tone of the Central Bank Report.
I object to people who have painted one picture for a decade turning around and painting another picture.
They do not paint it for nothing.
It was the kind of mentality which created in this country the spirit of defeatism that permeated the whole community. It was as a result of efforts of that sort. They got more than enough of it and that is why they changed their tactics.
They got back leadership.
We brought back various programmes also. However, there are only a few more words I want to say. I think the writing is on the wall for the policy originated in the summer of 1951. Since then, the numbers in employment are down by nearly 100,000. The population of the country is down by 150,000 so that the numbers in employment have decreased much more in proportion to the population. The number in employment is 1,200,000 out of a population of 3,000,000—2 out of every 5— so that the corresponding ratio arithmetically of people fewer in employment would be 2 out of every 5. That would be 60,000 but, in fact, it is 100,000 since the summer of 1951. Emigration has also increased enormously since that time. It was only in the period from 1946 to 1951 that the population of the country went up.
There is no increase worth mentioning in the real income of the community since 1951. If, in fact, the Minister's Budget this year, with the reduction in income tax, indicates a change of heart, I welcome it, and I hope it is the beginning of a programme which I should like to see, and which Senator Cole made reference to this evening. I do not understand why it is that the State finds it almost impossible to put money into agriculture. It can put money into everything else.
Roads.
I do not want to mention them.
You cannot on this Bill.
Of course I can. This is the Appropriation Bill. This is where we are dealing with money for jet planes and everything else.
Not if you keep within the terms of the Bill.
I shall leave it at that.
Initially, I should like to say that I am shocked to notice that no Government speaker has contributed to this debate and, without being antagonistic to the Government, I suggest this shows a contempt for Parliament. Contempt for Parliament is a bad thing. Why can we not all discuss these matters, even those of us who have not got inside the Fianna Fáil Party and do not want to?
It is never too late.
Fianna Fáil should also contribute to the debate just as we do, and if we make a case, it is their duty to reply to it. Nine speakers have spoken from this side of the House and there has been no reply from the other side. I think that shows contempt for Parliament, as distinct from Government, and it is a bad trend which has been paralleled here on previous occasions when Ministers did not attend when their business was being discussed.
My main remarks will be on agriculture. The previous speaker mentioned the fact that it seems to be impossible to put money into agriculture. Just to put things into their context, I should like to mention that this year we are voting £11,340,000 for agriculture. At the same time, we are giving a miserable pittance to those people who cannot look after themselves for various reasons, health, old age or unemployment. We are voting to them £20,400,000, a miserable individual pittance. In order that we can compete with the major industries of the world today and we lag far behind, after making every effort, we can find £11,000,000 from a total of £115,000,000 and, at the same time, there is much unemployment. Many old people who have to fend for themselves have an income of less than £53 15s. per year, and we have to spend £20,400,000 in order to give them what, I suppose, must be the most miserable pittance any person who has to live on the State gets in the world.
When we look at the Vote for Agriculture, we find that what had to be voted willy-nilly and without choice —because if it was not voted and if we did not gear up as best we could, we would be out of the cattle markets of the world in a short time—showed an increase of £1,680,000. I refer, of course, to the Bovine Tuberculosis Eradication Scheme Vote. We have no choice there. We must proceed with the maximum speed and, as we take in the different counties, it is a simple sum in arithmetic to make up the money required, the amount needed for compensation for reactors, and all the rest, and we can add up the bill. Neither the Minister for Agriculture nor the Minister sitting here has any choice in that matter. It is a "must" and we on this side and Senators on the other side all agree that it is a "must". The increase there is £1,680,000. The net figure is £1,860,000 and in circumstances in which our social assistance bill is almost literally double the amount of money we can spend on agriculture, we can give only the same amount of money this year as we gave last year. If all were well and if all were right, there would be nothing wrong with that, but, of course, we must look at a few other things.
Before moving to general agricultural policy, the first thing we must observe is that a net decrease of £310,650 is gained by the wiping out of Section B of the Land Project. My view of Section B is that it provided an opportunity for small farmers to get work done before they paid out money. I know the argument against me is that a lot of money was being spent on an acre of land which perhaps was wasteful expenditure. I hold that it was not and that many small farmers who had a necessary scheme in mind for which they would have to take in outside help, perhaps a bulldozer, an excavator or one of those machines, cannot in fact do it now because, first of all, they have to settle with the contractor, or assure him of their credit-worthiness. That has closed the door of the Land Project to the small farmers. The big farmer who can raise an additional overdraft for a period until he gets his grant can continue, but the small farmer cannot. It is a shame and a disgrace that that provision of £310,000 was removed.
This year, we have a decrease of £330,000 in the amount voted for losses on disposal of wheat. It is a net amount of £470,000 as compared with £800,000 in the previous year, and it refers entirely of course to wheat of the last harvest, and it refers entirely also to the deliberate policy of the Minister for Agriculture and the Cabinet at that time. We have now got another sum in arithmetic there which is a direct result of the policy of the Minister and the Government of the day. I shall not weary the House with all the details, but I say that if one looks up the statistics and takes out the relevant figures, one finds that in the worst harvest in living memory 12/3d. less per barrel on the average was paid for wheat than in the previous year. That was a direct result of Government policy and it was a direct result of Ministerial policy. The result is shown here and attention must be drawn to it. It is a shame and a disgrace that such is the case. Men have lost all.
There is a still more important facet which must be discussed and thought about, that is, that the Government are the people who told the farmers to grow more wheat and as a result many young men mistakenly sold their stock and bought combine harvesters and perhaps other farm machinery, or took credit for fertilisers and seeds from firms because they had no more money to buy on the best market on cash terms. When they had done all that, and done it on the basis of a five or ten years period, the Government now come along with this White Paper and say: "We were wrong; we now agree with the grey book. What we must now look to and must insist on are our cattle exports." Is it fair and is it right to these unfortunate men who are misled by the Government policy? I have said it many times but I shall say it again—that people living down the long lanes working hard six days of the week, and doing certain work on Sunday, doing their best for the community, for our economy and for themselves, cannot be expected to assess the rights and the wrongs of economic policy. They cannot be expected to do anything more than read in the daily papers the statements of the people they believe in, whatever side of the political fence they are on and having done so, assess what they should do on their small farms.
These men were deliberately misled and we have here another sum in arithmetic which tells us that after the last harvest they were badly treated. If anyone wants to deny that I can produce, straight off the cuff, the facts and figures because I know them inside out. If anyone likes to deny it he can have them, but I shall not weary the House with them. I say it is a shame, the third shame and the third disgrace, that the reduction adds up to a complete disregard by the Minister for Agriculture and the Government for the farmers' last harvest.
I notice a marked absence in the Estimate for Agriculture of anything except a general sort of approach, that cattle marketing is what we must turn to now. I agree completely with the policy that our exports of cattle to Britain are the things which are keeping us right, but we must not ignore other opportunities, if they are there, When I was a member of the other House from 1954 to 1957 in the last year of the inter-Party Government of that time I remember particularly the present Minister for Lands coming into that House with three big brief-cases, sitting behind them and producing a long diatribe on agricultural marketing. We were to have, he said, agricultural marketing, if Fianna Fáil got back into power. We were to see to it that we would export butter, cream and cheese and all those things which gave, he said, a greater output and reward per acre of land. I know he needed the three brief-cases because he is an excellent speaker with a good mind, but the one thing he has not got and his one big flaw is that he has no practical experience. I know he needed the three brief-cases. A joke was made one night that he could not be seen behind them.
I think that many people again subscribed to the Fianna Fáil idea as enunciated by him on those occasions and put them back into power. Today there is not one penny there, as far as agricultural marketing is concerned. No attempt is being made now, notwithstanding what the farmers' organisations have said to us that there will be an attempt to sell our milk products better than we are selling them. Everybody knows that the lowest return for milk products is butter because everybody makes butter. Similarly, everybody knows our packaging is bad.
I have gone through cities in England and tried to find our Irish agricultural produce wrapped in an attractive cover and stating that it came from Ireland. I could not find it. At that time—it was before the last election—all the time of the other House literally for a year was spent on insisting that when Fianna Fáil got back into power, they would see to it that we marketed all those other products as well as they could be marketed. The proof of that is that when they got back into power, they included in their Estimates a quarter of a million pounds for agricultural marketing. Things would be done in a large expansive way. Efforts would be made that had never been made before.
About 18 months later, in this House, I questioned the Minister about what had been done. I asked what happened the quarter of a million pounds. Giving the official answer, he said we had not spent it yet, so why vote more? All that has been done is that a committee was formed which sat and produced two reports that I know of, the Bacon Report and the Eggs and Poultry Report. These two reports have been very useful in a most nebulous and academic way but they have not done one thing, say, to have our ham put in an Irish wrapper and attractively placed before the people in a city in Britain so that we can get an extra penny a lb. for it. They have not tried to export our cream in a container that would say "Fresh Irish Cream." They have not done anything about our pigs; they have not done anything about our poultry products; they have not done anything about our milk products.
Yet, at the same time, I remember well and must recall the time when for 18 months that gentleman came in. What is the worst sin of all? I have been speaking for the past 15 minutes and saying exactly what the main agricultural organisations have been saying. I want now to say that I was not saying it deliberately to agree with them and to curry favour. That gentleman came in and it was from their very production that he quoted and it was from their very enunciations that he made his speeches. Yet, what was there? Nothing, when Fianna Fáil got back into power, absolutely nothing.
Perhaps the Senator would now come to the subject matter of the Bill before us.
With respect, I think I have been right on the ball all the time.
Senator Donegan must have a nightmare.
I was discussing the Vote for the Department of Agriculture. I now come to the Vote for the Department of Industry and Commerce. The first thing I want to say is that I am pleased with what the Government did in Dundalk. There was a problem there. Many people had been trying to apportion blame. I did not try to do it, anyway. On one occasion, I introduced a motion here which dealt with two facets of the problem. Both these facets have now been satisfactorily dealt with, I am glad to report.
The main approach of the Government was that they would have five companies and put in there, over the years, £1½ million and that, having done that, they would try to employ the people who were dispossessed of employment by the closing of the railway works. As a public representative for Louth, I am pleased with what they gave and think they did the right thing. The people opposite can believe that I do not always criticise just for the pleasure of criticising. I am glad the Government did what they did. It was the right thing to do. The people of Dundalk are thankful for it and I am quite happy to record the position. I know that every support I can give locally and publicly will be given.
In today's Irish Times, the Taoiseach, speaking on industry and commerce, is reported as follows:
The remedy for the country's economic situation was not to dismantle industrial tariffs, the Taoiseach, Mr. Lemass, said in the Dáil last night. Such a decision "might cure our ills, but would possibly kill us in the process."
"We need to promote a new outlook, and get the leaders of opinion in every walk of like to see the need for a deliberate campaign to make our economy more efficient."
We are now discussing the Estimate for the Department of Industry and Commerce on the Appropriation Bill. To me, that statement adds up in a general way to failure. It is an admission that our industrial effort has failed. It is an admission that the men employed in industry are not secure in their jobs. It is an admission that there must be a new departure If such be so, then many people have been very wrong for many years.
The first thing that strikes one is that the Taoiseach has stated that we must produce at a cheaper rate. We must produce our goods for export at a lower cost of production. At the same time, our problem becomes more difficult and more disappointing when, on page 9 of the same paper, we read the report of a statement by Mr. John Conroy, head of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, at the Congress of Trade Unions. The report is as follows:
"The time has come," Mr. Conroy stated to the delegates, "for the trade unions to take a more forceful and perhaps a more aggressive attitude regarding this ‘woolly headed/' and wrong thinking and wrong policy attitude of low wage rates for manual and lowly-graded white-collar workers. We must initiate a nation wide endeavour to persuade the public authority, conservative employers and all the paid minions who serve them that no longer can the manual worker be continuously kept at poverty level wages."
We are in the position that the Taoiseach tells us—and I suppose that politically he is regarded as the man who has most interested himself in industry—that we are in trouble, that we must have a new outlook, a new attitude, and that we must produce at a lower cost of production. At the same time, a responsible trade union leader who has his job to do comments on the fact that the manual worker is ill-paid and says there must be a more aggressive attitude on the part of trade unions in relation to a demand for wages.
Here we are now. Our industry is in the position that the Taoiseach says dismantling tariffs is not the answer, but he is not the only one who will have a say in the dismantling of tariffs. The world is getting smaller. We have an Outer Seven, an Inner Bloc and all these groupings of countries. We may find ourselves in the position that we may have to dismantle tariffs. At the same time, the responsible trade union leader says our manual workers are ill-paid. I do not know where we go from there but I know that there must be an accent in industry on the production of goods which would commonly be termed “agricultural goods”.
There are opportunities for the production, for instance, of canned fruits and of canned horticultural products of other kinds. There are opportunities for the processing of our meat products. All these opportunities, I think, have been largely wasted because things were too easy. My anxiety is that in this Book of Estimates and in the general policy of the Government, they are inclined somewhat to dismiss agriculture as a matter of a bullock feeding on the grass to be exported, that the rest will be forgotten; that there will be no accent on agricultural marketing because it happens to be difficult and expensive in the first instance and is not being given its proper place.
Therefore, I would say that the future must be one in which there will be an accent on the production of agricultural produce and the processing of it industrially. We have far too many situations where there is a tariff wall, raw materials are imported, goods produced and sold at 2d. a unit to the home market but at a penny a unit abroad.
I live on the road to the North of Ireland. Lorries pass my door every day. I shall not even mention the produce on them. It is a very necessary article which is used by everybody in this country. The price of that article in this country is two and a half times what it is when it reaches the North of Ireland. Were we right when we started that industry? We must doubt it. There are 400 employees and they must live, but were we right? Therefore, I say we must have the accent in industry on the commodity for which we can produce the raw material. I know of no raw material in Ireland except the produce of our agricultural community. Therefore, I say that, if necessary, the State must come in. If private enterprise cannot produce and process agricultural commodities in an acceptable form, well packaged for the world trade, then the State must come in. I do not want to see that because I believe in private enterprise. However, if we are to continue, we must have the new accent the Taoiseach speaks about, but it must have a leaning towards agriculture and if it has not that then we are finished.
The last speaker spoke about State-organised companies. We vote moneys here for State-organised companies. I disapprove completely of those State-organised companies going into competition and selling goods or producing articles which are sold or produced by the ordinary private enterprise people. We may have to do that in agricultural goods, if private enterprise cannot do it. However, I object, for instance, to the E.S.B. being allowed to sell electric kettles in competition with an unfortunate trader down the street. It is most unfair. We are providing capital to enable them to go into competition with a person who is paying his rates, rent and taxes and who has helped to provide the capital. Is that right or fair?
Similarly, I disapprove of a body such as Comhlucht Siúicre Éireann spending a lot of money on the development, say, of Gowla Bog. Even if it were only one-eighth of a penny per lb. decrease in the price of sugar, the consumer in this country who put up the capital, in the first instance, is entitled to that one-eighth of a penny. Any of these investigatory examinations should be included in the Book of Estimates by a Department of State. If we want to investigate bog development the people to do it are the Department of Lands or the Department of Agriculture and it should appear as a figure in the Book of Estimates. I do not like to see large powerful State-owned organisations which got their capital in the first instance from the people of this country going into competition with the private enterprise people who put up their due amount towards the capital which was provided.
In the Estimate for the Department of Defence, there is a reduction of which I heartily disapprove. On a previous occasion, I put this matter to the present Minister but he did not answer me or tell me why. He did not tell me what was the policy or why this was done. I refer to the decrease in the Vote for the Army Equitation Team of £6,000, from £8,500 last year to £2,500 this year. We have very little advertising in this country. Our advertising abroad is very small. However, there is one thing which we have and it is the best in the world, namely, our horse flesh. Here is an opportunity to advertise our horse flesh, to show that we have the best horses in the world, to show that we have as good horsemen as there are anywhere in the world, and we neglect the opportunity.
Since then, there have been retirements from the Army Equitation School. One man has retired who, I think, was really in charge of the whole show. Is it right that this should be so? Has his retirement any relation to the reduction of £6,000 in the Vote? It would be most unfair if it had. I disapprove of the manner in which the Minister for Defence has been conducting his Ministry. If this is part of his change-over policy, I should like to know if it is condoned by the Government and if the Government feel our Army Equitation Team has not been doing its job and fully advertising our horse flesh abroad.
There is no new flavour to the Book of Estimates. We have come through a period in which we had a credit squeeze. We have come through a period in which the rights and wrongs were laid down for us in the Grey Book. Then, from that, the Government produced its White Paper. There should be a new flavour in the Book of Estimates. I have referred to the fact that nothing has been done in relation to agricultural marketing. I have referred to the dilemma in which we find ourselves in industry and commerce and if this Book of Estimates shows any answer to this problem, I cannot see it.
I would point out that nobody on the Government benches has so far spoken in this debate while nine Senators have spoken from this side of the House. That being so, I can only say that the Government are really disinterested in Parliament. They are interested only in staying in power. They are not interested in change. Yet, change there must be if we are not to go back again to the 1955-56 period which we do not wish to see again. Therefore, this Book of Estimates and this Appropriation Bill are a disappointment. There is no new look about them. I only hope that by the time we produce next year's Appropriation Bill, there will be some change in the outlook of the Government.
I have sat through this entire debate and listened to every speaker since 3 o'clock. I have paid the greatest attention to the points put forward by each speaker. My reluctance to rise is largely because I felt nothing concrete had been said by any Senator at any stage which was sufficient to induce one to rise to one's feet and repudiate it, if necessary. Only now, after an accumulation of four or five hours' speaking, can one say that at least a few tenuous points have been made by Senators which it might be no harm to deal with.
This debate started on a high level. I think Senator McGuire set a very high tone which was maintained for some time and, indeed, up to the point when the last two political speakers entered the debate. In that context, it might be no harm to mention that all the speakers, I hope, who have spoken so far in the debate were not on any particular anti-Government side. We had contributions from Senator Quinlan, Senator Cole and Senator Stanford. These are all men of independent views whose contributions are most valuable. I would not bracket them as being on any particular side, despite Senator Donegan's efforts to shove them into a particular point of view or a particular corner in this arena.
I suppose that, since we spoke on this matter this time last year, the biggest single event that has occurred and the most important thing that has been done in this country since the formation of the State has been the honest, candid publication by the Government of their appraisal of the country's economic condition and their views on how we should progress over the next generation.
It is the first time that has been done since the formation of the State. It is the first time that a Government have openly and candidly produced for the public benefit their view. It is the first time a Government have faced up to the difficulties and problems in our economy with candour, told the people frankly the difficulties and the problems and stated in a modest way what the objectives were to alleviate those problems and improve economic conditions here. The White Paper laid by the Government before the Houses of the Oireachtas in November last marked a real effort in the history of this country which has not been appreciated, as it should, in the Seanad.
Certainly, outside Seanad Éireann, every society, body, organisation and group interested in the future of this country's economy endorsed their approval of this White Paper, expressed their views on it and made constructive suggestions. I think that the final paragraph on page 48 shows the long-sighted attitude taken. In paragraph 139 it states:
The programme outlined in this White Paper is calculated to release a dynamo of progress in the Irish economy. Making all allowances for imprecision in the available information, it is estimated that the implementation of the programme will result in an increase in real national income of some 2 per cent. per annum; this rate, which is twice that achieved in recent years, would double national income in real terms in 35 years. The programme will, therefore, make a significant contribution towards the advancement of national prosperity, but, in the last resort, progress will depend on the determination of the people to prosper, on their capacity for hard work and on their willingness to cooperate in the fulfilment of a comprehensive national programme.
In other words, the Government, outlining the difficulties, set their targets and laid down the programme. It is now a question for the ordinary people operating in their various spheres of life to row in with that programme and do their best for the economy of the country over the ensuing years. I think that was a very real and practical contribution towards the country's welfare.
We now know exactly where we stand. We are not arguing from Budget day to Budget day. We are not arguing on motions introduced haphazardly in this or the other House. We now have a definite programme with targets set by the Government and, if we happen to be beaten in the next election, another Government can follow. To that extent, the country's economic welfare and the furtherance of it has been taken out of the hurly-burly of politics.
We have finally got out of much of the sort of electioneering we had in this country, particularly during the 1944 general election, the sort of electioneering which revolved around the price of the pint or 20 cigarettes. We have got out of that. Here is an outline of a programme that can be carried out by any Government over the next ten, fifteen or thirty years. It can be added to, modified or improved and the details filled in but the outline is there.
In fact, in the very first year of the programme there has been a welcome improvement in the modest figures set. I think the Government, although they could have made more spectacular or flamboyant play of the proposals, were very right in setting modest targets. They could have made more political capital out of it if the targets were for more millions. The target set in regard to proposed investment over the next five years is, if anything, on the modest side.
I think that was the proper and honest way to approach it. In Appendix II of the White Paper the various totals of the proposed public capital programme for the next five years are set out. Of course, in each year there is an increase in the totals, over and above the capital investment which obtained heretofore. The welcome thing is that the total estimate made last November by the Government of the capital investment by public authorities in the current year 1959-60 came to £41.69 million. That was the estimate of the public capital programme.
It is very welcome to see that that modest appraisal of the target which the Government set for the current year has been increased and that, over and above the figure of £41.69 million set in the White Paper, there is an increase of £3.5 million in Government investment for the current year so that, in fact, the total capital programme in the State in the current year 1959-60 is £7.38 million more than last year.
There is a real step forward. The State is playing its positive part in improving the total amount of investment in the country. The practical way it is doing that is by investing £7.3 million more in 1959-60 than it invested in the previous year, 1958-59. In fact, the figure of £7.38 million includes a figure of £3.5 million in advance of the proposed investment under the White Paper so that in the five months between the White Paper and the Budget things had improved. The Government were able to see that their cautious appraisal was, in fact, more than justified and that additional capital expenditure could be proposed by the Government in the coming year.
If that pattern continues, then the total proposed investment of £220 million over the next five years will be considerably increased. The modest calculations of £220.44 million at that rate of progress could be considerably increased to something around £300 million invested by the State in capital projects in this country over that five year period. That is the first step that can be taken in this country towards improving the level of employment. It is the first practical step that can be taken towards reducing the emigration figures by increasing the volume of state capital investment to a practicable level so that it does not obtrude unduly on the balance of payment figures. The position can be further improved if that is supplemented by an increasing flow of private investment. That is elementary economics but it is good to see a practical Government getting down to practical economics in that way.
It might be no harm to analyse how that increased investment has been spent. That can best be done by going to the Book of Estimates to see where these increased amounts are being spent. In spite of what Senator Donegan says, most of the increase in the State investment programme can be laid to agriculture, forestry, fisheries, tourism and the Industrial Credit Company. I cannot imagine any more worthwhile productive projects in which the State can interest itself than the ones I have just mentioned. The increase in State investment of £7 million odd over last year is primarily reflected in this Book of Estimates in increased amounts made available by the State in the directions I mentioned. Senator Donegan can now play away with the details of the Agricultural Estimate, if he wishes.
Not play.
But the plain fact is the investment by the State——
Has produced less employment.
——in agriculture has increased by over £1 million in the current year over last year. In other words, there is an increased investment of practically £2 million. The figure of £9,500,000 odd of last year has increased to £11,300,000 odd. I agree that £1,600,000 of that is due to increased investment in the very necessary bovine tuberculosis scheme. The Government have shown their realisation of the urgency of that matter by increasing the investment which is £3½ million in the current year.
The other major item in that increase is, in my view, the most practical thing that has been done for Irish farming in years. We have heard much talk about the late Deputy Patrick Hogan and various other Fine Gael and Coalition Ministers for Agriculture but the most practical single thing ever done since the formation of the State has been the introduction in the current year of the phosphatic manure plant to make fertilisers available to the farmers at considerably reduced prices.
How is the land reclamation going?
And they reduced the grant for lime.
The most important single need of the land at the moment is fertilisers. It is quite clear from perusing the White Paper, which was prepared under expert advice, that a large increase in the use of phosphates is essential. The Government, acting on that advice, as set out in the White Paper, got into action immediately and before the Budget proposals were set out they brought in a supplementary grant, in the latter half of last year, to subsidise fertilisers. That grant enabled farmers to avail of fertilisers at a cheap rate and in the Book of Estimates the Government have provided £1¾ million so that this very necessary ingredient is being made available to the farmers in the current year.
There has been much talk, in particular by the former Minister for Agriculture, to the effect that we are a Party who are not interested in agriculture. It is a popular refrain that he repeats up and down the country; he repeats it so often that I think people are half beginning to believe that it is right. It is like the lie which, if you tell it two or three times and tell it loud enough, people will automatically come to think that there may be something in it. It is a most presumptuous attitude. You can have all the land project schemes and all the other schemes in the world—and I do not deny their importance—but paramount in real value to this country—and we shall see its results in the next few years—is the introduction of this subsidy to provide artificial manures.
And the British market is gone for ever, thanks be to God.
The point has been made here before by, I think, Senator O'Donovan, the Leas-Chathoirleach, that this fertiliser subsidy will only benefit the large farmer. I come from an area of small farmers and I disagree entirely with that. I take the reverse view and I said last year—I do not say that anything I said had anything to do with the proposals which have been introduced—that the fertiliser subsidy would be of greater benefit to the small farmer than to the large farmer. The small farmer has his back to the wall with his limited acreage. He cannot afford to farm as extensively as the big farmer does. He has got 20, 30 or 40 acres and he has to get the maximum out of that acreage. The only way he can improve his position is by reducing his outgoings and the major way in which he can do that is by cheaper fertilisers. Lime is already subsidised. A further way in which he can bring about this reduction is by having cheap fertilisers for the limited acreage that he has and improve his productive capacity.
That is why, I think, this is a far greater benefit to the small farmer than to the large farmer because the small farmer has to use more fertilisers than the large farmer. The bigger farmer has not the same incentive because he can lie back on his bigger farm, farm extensively and get a reasonable income from it. The Government is making the main fertiliser which is required—superphosphate—available at a cheap rate and I think that is a practical farming policy. The White Paper, on page 13, paragraph 9, states:—
Our rate of use of phosphate fertiliser is far below the average for Western Europe. It is considerably less than half the rate of consumption in Britain, where climate and physical conditions closely resemble ours. The phosphate status of only about 10 per cent. of our soils can be regarded as reasonably satisfactory. There is, therefore, from the technical aspect, enormous scope for increased use of phosphates——
You must first lime the land.
To bring about this rapid expansion in the use of phosphates the Government set aside £1.75 million to reduce the price of phosphates. That is now being made available and is being utilised by the Irish farmers who are buying phosphates. I have seen them in my own town. They are pouring into the local merchants to buy phosphates at reduced prices.
In paragraph 24 of the White Paper, on page 14, it is set out that this desire to increase the application of phosphates is part of a general agricultural plan to raise the fertility of our land and I quote:
While phosphorus deficiency is the outstanding grassland problem, soil tests indicate that there is also a shortage of potassium in many soils. A further increase in output could be obtained from grasslands by the use of phosphatic and potassic fertilisers and a further substantial increase by the judicious use of nitrogenous fertilisers, in conjunction with phosphates and potash, for hay and silage and for extending the grazing season. Farmers will be encouraged to adopt a balanced and co-ordinated fertiliser programme. Government assistance towards this end will, in the first instance, be directed towards encouraging the greater application of phosphorous which, as the key nutrient, is essential to the improvement of grasslands; when a satisfactory increase in the use of phosphates has been attained, it will be Government policy to apply State aid towards securing increased application of potash and nitrogen fertilisers.
You did not agree with that at all.
Senator Lenihan is entitled to make his speech without interruption.
The Senator has a nightmare, after the result he heard this afternoon. We can give him a pass.
We can see there evidence of a planned programme of application of fertilisers, not of one particular fertiliser against another, but a programme based on the lime applications we have at the moment, supplemented by an enormous increase which is needed of phosphates, and then followed by an equivalent application of potash and nitrogen. We can see a situation evolving under which, in nine or ten years, our land will be at maximum fertility and all that will be needed will be a continuous application, in accordance with a definite plan, of the manures required, in the appropriate quantities.
Apart from that increase of nearly £2 million in the Estimate for Agriculture, which accounts for a considerable portion of the £7 million increase in State investment, there are other substantial increases, all on the productive end of our economy. With regard to the Forestry Department, the increase has been £85,400 in the current year as against last year. The investment in Forestry last year was £1,904,550, while this year it is £1,989,950, an increase of over £90,000 in investment in forestry.
To show that the increase in State investments is still on the productive end, there is an increase of £156,000 in the current year in investment by the State in Fisheries. The increase here, proportionate to the amount invested last year, is quite an achievement. In 1958-59 the total invested in our fisheries—An Bord Iascaigh Mhara and the Inland Fisheries—was £195,020. In the current year it is £351,420. The State investment in Fisheries, both Inland and in Bord Iascaigh Mhara, has practically doubled. That is all tied up with the proper development of our fishing industry, the proper development of fish meal projects such as those at Killybegs, Dunmore East and other places on the coast.
We have those three Departments— Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries—in which there is scope for increased State investment of a productive kind. That is surely an indication that the present Government is concerned primarily, in its increased State investment, with increasing it in a productive manner.
The other major openings for investment are tourism and increased industrial development. The State's scope for interference directly in industrial development is limited and can be achieved only by grant or loan. In tourism, a practical effort is made by increasing State investment in tourism in the current year by £60,000. Last year it was £440,000 and in the current year it was £600,000. Therefore, in all these fields in which practical good can be achieved, the increase in State investment has been directed towards those productive channels I have mentioned—the £2 million for Agriculture and the increases in Forestry, Fisheries and Tourism.
As regards industry, it is quite apparent that the State, by the very nature of industry, cannot participate directly except to a limited extent in industrial development. What the State can do in that sphere is by way of supplementary assistance. In that respect, the various targets set out in the White Paper have been expedited in recent months. It was recommended there that the whole scheme of grants towards industry be tightened into one Department and that the machinery be incorporated into one body, An Foras Tionscal. That has been carried out under a Bill which has not come before the Seanad yet. It is proposed to increase the grants, from the resources of the State towards industrial development, from £6 million to £10 million, as the State has set aside £10 million which will be available by way of grant towards any worthwhile industrial project.
In fact, the maximum grant towards an industry located anywhere in this country, provided it conforms to the provisions of the Bill, has been raised to £250,000. The resources of the Industrial Credit Company have been enlarged by £15 million and there is also a Bill to enlarge the functions of Córas Tráchtála. This is all practical work in the direction in which the State can help best in regard to industry.
The increased State investment, both in the agricultural sector—in forestry and fisheries—and in tourism and in industry, is all designed to raise our productive capacity. It is good to see that that is where the increase in State investment is going. It is not going to purchase consumer goods; it is not going to perpetuate investment of a doubtful productive nature. The increased investment has been rigidly channelled into the spheres I have mentioned, where the greatest good can be obtained for the community.
Progress has been made, but anyone would agree that there are serious problems remaining to be solved. Senator O'Quigley referred, at an earlier stage, to one of them, the problem of the small farm. That is a problem which took up a considerable portion of the time of the Emigration Commission some years ago. There is no doubt it is a serious problem. There are 314,000 holdings in the country which exceed 1 acre; over half of those are below 30 acres and a further 20 per cent. are between 30 and 50 acres. There are 74 per cent. of the farms under 50 acres and 54 per cent. under 30 acres. I think the Government have helped in a practical way in regard to phosphate subsidy, which enables cheap fertilisers to be obtained by that type of farmer. Some more things need to be done in that connection. There is scope in vegetable and horticultural production. The small farmer finds difficulty in fitting into the cattle-raising scheme of things. Inevitably, he will always have some part in it, but it does not make his profit per acre very high and, with a limited acreage, he will be always on a modest income, if he depends on the cattle industry, no matter how prosperous it is. The farmer of between 30 and 50 acres, as Senator L'Estrange knows well, if depending entirely on the cattle industry, cannot hope to have a great degree of prosperity.
I am trying to approach the problem in a reasonable way. This is a genuine difficulty and political points should not be made out of it. Whereas that farmer's prosperity has increased in recent years, due to the cattle industry, there is a ceiling to the prosperity he can achieve in that way.
As a grazier.
The profit from an animal of three months or six months is not anything like what it is at a later stage. The farmer is primarily concerned with disposing of his calves. As Senator Donegan mentioned, in this question of vegetable and horticultural production the difficulty is in regard to marketing abroad. Not nearly enough of our small farmers are being encouraged or assisted; and not nearly enough thought has gone into the scope in that direction.
I know for a fact that in the Agricultural Estimate here, there is an amount being spent in the Athlone area of South Westmeath and South Roscommon, specifically mentioned in the Book of Estimates, an amount of £872, under a temporary scheme for the growing of horticultural crops in the Athlone area. I am glad to see there has been an increase in the amount this year. That £872 has done enormous good. There is one agricultural instructor there, from the Department of Agriculture and he has been there for some years. It is an area in which there are very small farms. He has booked contracts for them here in Dublin in the winter; they sell direct and are paid on contract. The scheme is guaranteed and they are earning good money on small farms. I think more could be done in that line. The instructor is the only one in the country and he happens to be in my area and I know the good he is doing.
I know the prosperity that has been brought to farmers in my area as a result of that modest expenditure of £872. They are getting a high yield per acre from products such as Brussels sprouts, carrots, onions and vegetables of that kind. If we cannot get private enterprise to go into food processing or into the freezing of food for marketing abroad, I would suggest the possibility of having a State company on the lines of the Sugar Company. They would book contracts with farmers as the Sugar Company book beet contracts and seek markets for the produce.
That could only be done after very intensive study of markets abroad. We have not markets here to permit of any sort of expansion in vegetable growing or horticulture. Therefore any big effort to dispose of the produce would have to be made abroad. Any such development would depend entirely on the export market. I believe the matter would bear investigation and if possible a sales investigation should be carried out in the first place in the event of a State company stepping in. It is one of the lines from which small farmers can get high profit per acre— vegetable growing and horticulture.
Senator Quinlan mentioned the dairy business as another outlet for the small farmer particularly in the South. That is probably true but the difficulty with regard to the dairying business is the trouble in exporting butter. Our butter exports are entirely subsidised and I do not think there is any scope in changing milk into butter to flog it abroad. There is no scope in that if it is to be done perpetually at the expense of the taxpayers. I think, however, investigation could be made into by-products of milk. I know there are obvious ones that we have already but I am told there are new chemical developments linked with milk such as, for instance, in the plastics field. Investigations of that kind into processes, in which milk is combined with other chemicals to form some useful substance such as plastics, could be valuable.
There is no doubt that while the cattle industry brings reasonable prosperity and I think in recent years has contributed much to prosperity, if we are to make really great strides in agriculture we must think of the 74 per cent. of our farmers owning land or living on holdings under 50 acres. So long as that percentage is there, we must seek alternative agricultural fields that will benefit them apart from the cattle industry itself. On the whole, having mentioned those items of production, progress is being made. The important thing is that there is a new mood of agreement in the country on the fundamental aims that must be achieved. The new Taoiseach has appealed for a greater degree of co-operation on these fundamental issues and there is a remarkable degree of unanimity in the country at the moment on the problems that face us and on the importance of giving the Government full support in working them out.
I think that has arisen largely from the restoration of confidence in public affairs and in public finances here. This awareness of the public to the problems, and their willingness to face up to them, have arisen, first of all, from the restoration of public confidence in public affairs and in those who manage our public and financial affairs.
I am not being merely political in saying this. Largely due to Government action, I think—other people may disagree with me—but whether it was Government action or not at the end of 1956 and early in 1957 a state of affairs existed here when people had lost faith and confidence in State affairs and when public finances were suspect. I shall not even dwell on whether there was any reality in the belief that we were approaching bankruptcy. I think we were but I shall not go into that politically. In 1957 the public thought so at any rate. There was a great lack of public confidence in the financial state of the country——
Fianna Fail and the Irish Press!
I do not think the Irish Press would have any influence on the solid men who run the banking affairs of the country. They are primarily concerned with the facts and figures before them.
There is no doubt that in these hard times any country's prosperity must ultimately rely on the healthy state of its financial institutions and at present our banking system and the Government are co-operating and working together to see that credit is made available for any project of a worthy kind. That situation was never as good before as it is to-day. You have all the banks co-operating in a scheme announced six months ago by the banks, providing credit for the replacement and re-stocking of heifers. They are setting an example. The banks, apart from the Agricultural Credit Corporation, are entering into the field of finance in a very practical way. I think that situation could never have arisen unless our banks had confidence in the institutions of the State through which that finance will be disbursed.
The banks at present have that confidence and I am personally quite well aware that their attitude is quite liberal in regard to the disbursement of moneys for these purposes. I know cases where the banks have proved themselves to be very liberal and that is a very healthy sign. We have the example of the banks, in co-operation with the Government through the Agricultural Credit Corporation, entering into these spheres of agriculture that I think have been neglected for so long. The scheme operated by the banks is a better scheme than any of those operated by the Agricultural Credit Corporation because when the banks enter into it they are the people best equipped to operate it. They have local officers throughout the country; their officials know the people in their own immediate area and they are well equipped to operate any agricultural credit scheme. They are certainly doing this one in an excellent fashion.
I think Senator O'Donovan was rather surprised at the non-critical attitude of the Central Bank report this year. It could not be otherwise because there was so little to criticise. In the annual report which for many years was consistently critical you had right through it what the Senator said was just "painting white on black" but what I prefer to regard as an attitude of mind clearly at one with that of the Government of the day and appreciative of the fact that there is public confidence in the country and that within that framework of public confidence, schemes of a worthwhile nature can be operated and financed. I think that is the biggest single factor contributing to the prosperity we have today and to the general agreement among all thinking people that there are problems in the country that can be faced and that things can be improved, provided no destructive criticism is made and provided that we leave far behind the era of the "pint-of-stout" level of politics in which Senator L'Estrange lived for so many years.
Senator McGuire's principal theme was that our policy did not give private companies and investors an opportunity of getting capital to compete with the big public companies helped by the State. There is not much in that argument when you analyse conditions in the country. We provide the same tax concessions for all companies. Income tax and profits tax on companies here are lower than in England. Therefore, Senator McGuire's accusation that the State is taking practically all the available money and leaving nothing to be borrowed by the small companies is not borne out by examination. We have not heard of any small private company that could not go on for want of cash.
Included in the large sum appropriated by the State for capital development is a sum for the Industrial Credit Company to help these small companies, if they need help. However, I admit the position is disappointing in regard to these small companies. Over the past five years, the net fixed asset formation has been over £7 million a year. That is the net figure, taken after allowance for depreciation. It is very small and it would be much better if it were bigger, but I do not think any blame can be laid to the State for keeping that figure low
Senator Stanford spoke about C.I.E. He was anxious that the President, the Taoiseach, Ministers and higher civil servants should travel by rail. I agree with him, but there is a difficulty that, because this is a small country, our journeys are usually very short, and, being a rather sparsely populated country, the number of trains running is few. Therefore, it is difficult to get a convenient train to a place and back and that very often makes a person decide to go by car. I agree it is much more comfortable to go to Cork by train and I have gone to Cork by train myself on a few occasions. In fact, I think I went more often by train than by car, but there was no red carpet to receive me and no photographers to take my picture. The last time I went to the west I also went by train.
I have seen the letter published about these rare flowers in the Burren area in County Clare. It would appear from that letter that these flowers are merely exposed for view—not for sale—to visitors at Shannon, in order to show them what a beautiful place Clare is. This letter points out that they are not for sale and that no harm is being done. However, I shall make further inquiries because I agree it would be very foolish to take away these flowers, seeing they cannot be grown anywhere else.
I am always suspicious when I hear a Senator commence by saying he will not talk politics. That is how Senator Barry started and my suspicions were well founded. He attacked the Taoiseach—rather unfairly, I think—for writing to local authorities asking for suggestions. I do not see why any man should be attacked for that. I do not think Senator Barry would attack a Taoiseach on his own side, if he did it. He then went on to point out most sarcastically that all the corporators in Cork and all over the county are sitting down trying to think out good schemes for the development of the country for which a grant could be got. Is that not a grand thing? If we can get every councillor to sit down and think out what can be done, the Taoiseach's appeal will have had a good effect. Senator Barry may not like it because it did not come from a Taoiseach on his own side, but I do not see why we should find fault with it.
I am not familar with the case about public libraries the Senator mentioned but I am making an inquiry into that also.
I agree with Senator O'Quigley that the Government cannot, of themselves, achieve their stated aim of a higher standard of living for everybody. The people themselves must do that. Of course, the Government can sometimes by inducements give them the opportunity of doing it. We have given inducements, in certain cases by exemption from taxation; we have given grants to start certain industries; and we have given grants to agricultural producers. They are the inducements, but if the people do not avail of them, nothing can be done. The Senator is right in saying that only the people themselves can raise the standard of living, but the Government can give them the opportunity of doing so, or at least remove whatever obstacles are there.
For a very big section of the population the Government have improved the standard of living—I do not say they have brought it up to the proper standard—and that is the recipients of social welfare assistance. But the Government have done that by taking money from the better off people and giving it out to the people in the social welfare assistance class. That is a redistribution of wealth. It is a deliberate way of trying to raise the standard of living of a certain class.
The Senator also thinks that the Irish programmes on Radio Éireann have been good. I am very glad to hear that. We hear so much criticism of Radio Éireann that it is nice to hear some praise an odd time. I am not a listener myself but I like to hear praise where praise is due. However, the Senator complains that there are certain rather important events which do not get sufficient notice from Radio Éireann. I have taken a note of that point and I shall pass it on to the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. I have also noted the Senator's point that we may be going too far in the closing of Garda stations.
Senator Cole asked could there be a more expeditious way of distributing whatever grants may be coming to local authorities. He rightly makes the point that local authorities are very often in debt, while they are waiting for these grants and have to pay interest on overdrafts. He thinks it would be a great thing if they could be paid more expeditiously. I have also taken note of that and I shall discuss it with the Minister for Local Government. Unfortunately if I succeed, it is I will be paying interest and they will be relieved. However, that will not deter me from trying to get something done in that direction.
The Senator also spoke about agricultural education. In that context he made particular reference to the primary schools. I do not know what the views of the Minister for Education are with regard to the teaching of agriculture in the primary schools. My own view is that we should not push too hard in that direction. When children go to school only until they are 14 it takes them all their time to get a little education, an education sufficient to enable them to read afterwards and understand what they read. It might be better, therefore, to educate them up to 14 to a sufficient degree to enable them to read books on agriculture afterwards, and understand them. If we take away some of the time up to 14, then they may not be able to make proper use of books they may come across afterwards. That is my own personal view. The Minister for Education may take a different view.
I should like to emphasise a few points I have come across in reports. In November, 1956, the Minister for Education announced acceptance in principle of the recommendation of the Council of Education in favour of the introduction of nature study, together with drawing and physical training into the curriculum of the national schools. There was some trouble in regard to staffing. It was recommended to the Council of Education—this was proposed by the Catholic Headmasters' Association and supported by the Department—that the ruling which requires the possession of a Higher Diploma in Education as a necessary qualification for registration be suspended temporarily in the case of teachers with a degree in Agricultural Science. Unfortunately that proposal was rejected by the Council of Education. That naturally added to the difficulties of the Department in finding teachers for this new scheme, if you like to call it that, for introducing courses into the primary schools on rural science and agriculture. At the moment the matter appears to be suspended. I shall inquire and see what the actual position is.
Recently in connection with the coordination of the work of the vocational educational committees and that of the committees of agriculture discussions have been held between the officers of these two committees and certain agreement has been reached to pool their resources, and so forth, so that agricultural advisory services can be co-ordinated and the two Departments concerned agree to a joint programme for a part-time course. What they have in mind is a course extending over two to three years for young farmers in selected vocational schools. The details have not been worked out. I understand they are being worked out at the moment and it is intended that the project will be proceeded with. Possibly that does not exactly meet Senator Cole's point but it is, at any rate, a move in the right direction.
Senator Prendergast said he thought that there was a certain looseness in the administration of the bovine tuberculosis eradication scheme. He thought some farmers were not replacing their condemned cattle. He thought that aspect should be inquired into. That will be done. He suggested too, that there might be an increased price paid for milk from certified herds. I am afraid that would be an extremely difficult scheme to administer. I am sure the Minister for Agriculture will get notes of any points raised here relative to his Department. I should be surprised if he would agree to a scheme like that. Obviously it could only be a temporary scheme and the difficulties of working it would be very great indeed.
Senator Burke talked about the small private company which, he said, suffered great disadvantages in regard to taxation and death duties. I must say I do not know what the disadvantages are in relation to income tax or surtax. I should like to get more information on that. I see his point in regard to death duties. If a man who has shares in a big public company dies, and death duties have to be paid, that does not affect the big public company very much, even if the shares have to be put on the market. On the other hand, if there are three or four people who own a comparatively small private company and the biggest shareholder dies, that may give rise to a very awkward situation. But what are we to do? I do not see how we could exempt certain persons. Everyone must pay according to his means. I do not see any remedy except a repeal of death duties, and that is not possible at the moment. Neither can I understand his point that death duties should not be treated as revenue. I cannot see that there is very much difference between the income from death duties and the income from income tax or surtax. I do not agree with the Senator that there should be a review of that matter.
Senator Quinlan started by saying that we talk too much in this House. Perhaps he is right. His first point was that he thought Deputies are underpaid. A Deputy actually made that case on one of my Estimates two days ago. The Ceann Comhairle, evidently more strict than the Cathaoirleach here, ruled him out of order. Since it was out of order, all I could say was that I agreed with the Deputy. The same reply applies to what Senator Quinlan said. Deputies are grossly underpaid. I have been a long time in the Dáil now and, in all my experience, I have never known a man to leave the Dáil as well off as when he came into it. It is not a job anybody takes up to make money out of.
I do not see why Senator Quinlan was so embarrassed two years ago in America when my colleague, the Minister for External Affairs, gave his vote on the Chinese Question, as it is now called. I was in America at the time. I was there for a fortnight after that vote was taken. I was moving principally in Government circles. I seldom heard any comment on it and any comment I did hear was very, very mild. Whether or not that was because this little country is so insignificant, I do not know. Certainly there was no embarrassment as far as I was concerned and I was moving in Government circles.
They were sparing the Minister's feelings.
They did not spare them in other directions. When people talk about Catholic countries supporting that issue, they should remember that it was initiated principally by the United States of America and the principal supporter was Great Britain.
When we come to consider the milk question, I do not think any case can be made that there is a deterioration in milk supplies. Of course, last year there was some difficulty temporarily because last year was a bad year. Those of us who farm or dabble in farming had the experience at the end of last year of cows going almost dry that in other years would go on milking well into January or February, late calving cows. Then there was the very bad feeding for the winter, very bad hay and corn. Any corn reaped on the farm was musty and bad and the cows went out this spring in very bad form again and, for that reason, the milk supply is down. The number of cows supplying milk to creameries is up and there has been a tendency for the milk yield to rise over the last four or five years. So, we must regard this present low supply as a temporary matter, entirely due to the bad weather of last year.
The Senator said that there was no conflict between increased agriculture and increased production in industry. Fianna Fáil have been preaching that for the last 30 years. As a matter of fact, Fianna Fáil met with great opposition when they set out on an industrial programme in the early Thirties because the farmers were induced to believe that increased industry would be bad for them and the general worker was induced to believe that to grow our own wheat and to produce our own sugar, and so on, would be bad for them. Of course, that feeling was promoted by those who opposed Fianna Fáil at that time on these policies and it was believed by these sections but now everybody, of course, knows, what Fianna Fáil knew at that time. that increased production in agriculture and increased production in industry are mutually advantageous. There is no doubt about that.
I thought the Minister would not talk politics.
The economic war.
Senator O'Donovan gave a very good outline, indeed, of the capital structure of State bodies, apart from a few little political interjections, but I have some hesitation in agreeing with his summing up on the balance of payments. He does, of course, show that there was a total adverse balance, when it is all added up, over the last 13 years of £223,000,000 and he points out that, as far as the external assets of the banks are concerned, it only went down by about £28,000,000. Of course, these are the gross assets. I am not sure if it makes a great deal of difference when you come to net assets but it does make some difference, I am sure. Then, of course, Marshall Aid is carried on.
The only thing I can suggest is— and I have seen it stated rather authoritatively—that, over the past years, our private investments outside the country have gone down. I do not know by what figure, but they have gone down to a good extent. Finally, all I can say about this is, lest any Senators here might be misled, that the attack in this case is not on the Department of Finance. Neither is the attack on the Central Bank. The figures are supplied by the Central Statistics Office and I think Senators will agree generally that the Central Statistics Office give us very good service. They might, of course, make mistakes—I am sure they would admit that themselves—but they give very good service and I am quite sure have made a very honest and a very competent attempt, I should say, to give us the correct figures.
Exactly.
Senator O'Donovan went on to talk about the very big reduction in employment over the last 10 or 12 years and the big reduction in population. The economists are so difficult to follow. I was reading a very interesting article on Monday in the Irish Times by a colleague of Senator O'Donovan's and he expressed the very opposite point of view. He seemed to be most optimistic. He seemed to be very optimistic about the state of employment and even about the trend of emigration and consequently, of course, the trend of population.
Senator Donegan started off by saying—a thing that is usually said by the Opposition without very much thought and I can never see what good it does—that the Government will spend any amount of money on everything but very little on agriculture which, of course, is absolutely untrue. Statements of that kind cannot do any good to anybody. If the farmers pay any attention to these things—I suppose they do not—it has the effect of making the farmer discontented because he thinks he is being neglected by the Government and other people are getting everything that they want. Examine the figures. You have only to go to the White Paper published by the Government some time ago, which gives a table of the amount paid out, directly or indirectly, to agriculture. It amounts to about £20,000,000 a year. I defy Senator Donegan or any Senator who has spoken on this matter to add up anything like that for industry. You can count up only a few millions for industry. There are industrial grants. There is a remission of income tax. Count that too because, of course, that is a concession. These are the two big items but they will not come to anything like £20,000,000.
I did not make a comparison between industry and agriculture. I made a comparison between agriculture and the general amount of money spent and the only other figure by any other Department was social assistance.
The Senator said that agriculture gets very little; that others get anything they want. Who else gets it? Social welfare? There is more spent on social welfare—a few million pounds more. Something like £22,000,000 or £23,000,000 is voted for social welfare. I do not think the Senator would object to that. No Senator here, I am sure, will say that we are giving too much to the old age pensioner, the orphans or the widows. Any Senator or Deputy that I ever hear speak on these matters always says: "Would it not be great if we could afford to give them more?"
Again, take the controversy, if you like, between Section B of the Land Project and the subsidy on fertilisers. It is said by those who want to argue that what was done by the last Government in subsidising land improvement under Section B was better for the farmer than the subsidy on fertilisers and one of the reasons why they say that is that it benefited the small farmer. That question was raised last year. I did get figures afterwards but, unfortunately, I cannot lay my hand on them now but it is very easy to find out where Section B money was spent. If any Deputy asks the Question in the Dáil he will get the information as to the size farm on which it was spent. He will find it was to a great extent on the big farms that Section B money was spent and not so much at all on the small.
I suppose I am interested in this subject, like all Senators. When one gets an opportunity of finding out on the spot, one usually tries to find out what the people are saying about it. I met a contractor whom I know very well, who did a good deal of work under the Land Project. I met him within the last two months and I asked him how he was getting on since we removed schemes from Section B and he said he was more busy. He has quite a number of machines. He said that all his machines were being used under Section A and that he had not had a machine idle at any time. That is the report from one man.
On the other hand, I quite agree with Senator Lenihan that the subsidy on fertilisers will benefit the small farmer more than the big farmer, because he is perfectly right when he says that the small farmer with approximately 20 acres, who is trying to make a good living for himself and his family, cannot make it with ordinary production from that land. He has to take every last ounce out of it. He has to put every fertiliser available into it, and that means that the small farmer in that way is putting on more per acre of fertilisers than big farmers. Therefore, it is going to benefit the small farmer more. There is little doubt about that.
Senator Donegan gave the impression, whether he wanted to give it or not, that we dropped the wheat scheme and were unfair to the farmers in that scheme. We always advocated wheat growing and we still do. The only difference is that when we advocated it first the Fine Gael Party tried to say to the farmers that they could not grow wheat in this country. Now they have dropped that line and are saying they would be better for the farmers, as far as wheat growing is concerned. That is the only difference. We have always been the same. We know what the case is on the Fine Gael side.
You promised them 60/- a barrel.
We guaranteed the farmers so much for their millable wheat. Millable wheat was defined as wheat that could be milled into proper flour. We gave that guarantee and we kept that guarantee, but we even went beyond that. The country knows that we gave a guarantee for unmillable wheat last year, on account of the bad weather, and we voted a fair amount of money, I think about £800,000, for that purpose.
£470,000.
The Senator may be right. We will leave it at £470,000.
£330,000 less than the year before.
Do not bother about what is less. We voted money to give the farmer something he was never promised. We gave him better prices for unmillable wheat than the millers would give him for converting it into feeding stuffs. He was never promised that but we gave it to him on account of the bad weather last year. We gave the farmers a fair price for wheat. Yet Senator Donegan says we let them down.
Yes.
He says it again. What is the use in talking to such a Senator?
£330,000 less, in the worst year in living memory.
Whatever you do, Senator Donegan will say you let him down. If the last Minister for Agriculture were here, Senator Donegan would say he was the best Minister for Agriculture ever because he gave something that was never promised the farmer.
You took 5/8d. and gave back only 2/2d.
An Leas-Chathoirleach
Order!
Do not be talking; you are not able to talk for one thing. The wheat scheme was there. The guaranteed price was there, and I expect that we shall have a very good crop of wheat this year. I do not think, however, that we shall have enough, but we shall have almost enough. It is looking very well and it will be a good crop. Senator Donegan argues that because we came along with another scheme, that is, fertilisers for the land, where it was stressed you could get more from grassland by silage and other things, we were letting down the wheat growers.
No.
His argument is that you cannot do a second thing for the farmers without letting down the first thing. That sort of argument is hopeless. Senator Donegan went on to say that we promised them marketing. I think he was referring to the Minister for Lands—that he came in with a big brief and talked about marketing. Not only here but in the Dáil, half the time is spent by Fine Gael trying to explain how they lost the confidence of the people. That has been going on for the past ten years.
Tell us what you are doing for agricultural marketing.
Tell us how you got cracking.
Tell us how you got the confidence of the people.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
Order!
It may be my hearing, but I cannot hear what the Senator is saying.
No harm.
Anyway, the Senator went on to find fault with what we did about this. When preparing my first Budget I said to the Minister for Agriculture: "I will give you £250,000 for marketing because I think marketing is a very important matter. I believe if we had a market for more bacon we would get more bacon, and if we had a market for butter, we would get more butter. I will give you £250,000 for that." He replied that he was delighted and proceeded to set up a Marketing Committee. He appointed the members of that Committee from every single farming organisation in the country and told them: "Sit down, study marketing and give me your reports." They have given the Minister reports in a few cases. It is not easy to solve this marketing problem.
They must be bad dealers. The Danes have them licked.
If you can get 23 men to sit down and to give us a solution to marketing, it would be a very great help.
You would need only one—James Dillon.
He was in that Department for a number of years and what did he do for marketing?
What about eggs?
The Senator made a suggestion with regard to vegetables, fruit and so on. In my own constituency, there is a project for canning vegetables and fruit, but when they approached the authorities here in Dublin for help, I saw the answer they got. The answer was to the effect that this matter was overdone. I do not want to discourage the Senator in any way because I think that any of these suggestions should be examined. I am sure that the Committee that is examining this problem would listen to any suggestions made.
You gave the Minister for Agriculture £250,000. That implied that he was going to do more than establish two committees. What more did he do?
Do not blame the Minister.
I do not blame the Minister in any way.
The Marketing Committee know that money is there. If the Marketing Committee would say: "Let us try a certain market with a certain commodity for three months, with a possible loss of £10,000 or £15,000," it might be helpful, but they have not put such a suggestion to the Minister, at least as far as I know.
Has he taken any of their suggestions and done anything about them?
He has examined the first report and he has made recommendations on it.
The first report came in only about two months ago.
I was Minister for Agriculture a long time. I was in a lot of other Departments, including the Department of Finance, but I would rather do all the other Departments than the Department of Agriculture because I would never have as much work in all of them together as I would have in the Department of Agriculture. It is very hard for a Minister when he has to do so much.
We hope he will do his best.
The Senator is pleased about what was done in Dundalk. We are all very pleased when we hear something is done in our own constituencies that might relieve a certain amount of hardship, and create a certain amount of employment, but we are not so kind to the Government when they are doing something in another constituency. Deputies then ask how much money is being spent on it and how many men are getting employment for the money spent. It does not meet with their approval all the time.
Senator Donegan threw cold water on it in this House.
The tribute was given with good grace and I hope it will be accepted with good grace.
As regards the Equitation Schools, I must inquire about that because I did not ask the Minister for Defence to make any economies there. I had a talk with him and I certainly gave him the impression that if he wanted more money for that, he could get it. There may be some reason such as that they had horses bought but there was no deliberate policy of making an economy there, and cutting down the activities of that section.
I am delighted to hear it.
So far as the speech of Senator Lenihan is concerned, I do not intend to go through it because there is no use in saying that I agree or disagree with it.
He had the true gospel.
It is extraordinary the way people come out with the gospel from the other side.
We have the Old and the New Testaments.
It is extraordinary the way the infidels of wheat growing have come over to us and many other things like that. Quite a lot of them have.
Good conversions.
And you have got to like the British market now.
There is one other thing I want to go back on once more, which was stressed by Senator Lenihan, that is, the question of the necessity for fertilisers in our farming activities here. When we were drawing up our programme, the Department of Agriculture were asked for their views, and they were the first to say that the principal thing, the main thing, that should be done for agriculture was to give cheaper fertilisers and, in particular, in the cheaper fertilisers, to give cheaper phosphates. That was adopted. In their arguments, they used, to a great extent, the same arguments as were used by Senator Lenihan, that where a man had a certain amount of land and could not get more, the only way he could get more production was to put more fertiliser on the land. I think they were perfectly right in that. It supports what Senator Lenihan said that fertilisers would be used more per acre by the small farmer than by the big farmer.
Another Senator made the point that we should be more kind to the small farmer because he gives a bigger return per acre than the bigger farmer. That was certainly the case some years ago, but it looks as if the difference in production between the small farmers and the big farmers per acre is getting smaller and smaller. I do not know what the relationship may be now, but I think probably there is not a very great difference between the production per acre of the bigger and the smaller farmers. On the other hand, if we continue and we mean, of course, to continue, the fertiliser subsidy, I have no doubt that the small farmer will use it more per acre than the big farmer and that we small again get him into the forefront of production and get a bigger production per acre from him than from the bigger farmer.
Would the Minister please comment on the example I gave of the unfair treatment of private agricultural schools as compared with State agricultural schools?
I am afraid I am not in a position to comment on that because I know that when I was Minister for. Agriculture any time those private schools made applications to us, as a rule, we gave them practically all they asked for.
They are very badly off now.
I do not know if there is an application from them in the Department at present. Is there?
Yes.
That is a different matter. We shall see what it is. I do not know if the Senator has taken into account that in the State Schools, there is an appropriation-in-aid against the expenditure.
I know that.
They have the sales of produce and students fees and so on, and in the private school, it is a net amount. Still, I admit that even so, it is still much lower than the amount going to the State school. I did not know there was an application in the Department and I shall inquire into it.
There is always the hope of a change of heart.
That might be a bad thing.
Question put and agreed to.
Agreed to take remaining Stages to-day.
Bill put through Committee, reported without recommendation, received for final consideration and ordered to be returned to the Dáil.
The Seanad adjourned at 9.45 p.m. until Wednesday, 29th July, 1959.