In concluding this debate may I say, first of all that the Minister made some suggestion about this motion being taken earlier. It is not my fault that it was not. This motion has been on the Order Paper for the past two years and on, at least a dozen occasions, I have asked when it was proposed to take the motion. At all times I have been ready and willing to discuss it, so any delay in bringing the motion forward is not mine.
Farm Apprenticeship Scheme— Motion.
Debate resumed on the following motion:
That Seanad Éireann considers that a dynamic farm apprenticeship system is urgently required.
I am afraid the Senator was absent for a long period during which it was possible to take it.
The Seanad met just once when I was out of the country, for two weeks last June. The Senator is very much at fault if he thinks that is the case. In any case this motion is the first one that has come before the present Seanad and consequently I think we should have a look generally at the question in the hope that we may get some headline from the discussion. When anyone goes to the trouble and labour of preparing a motion and has put study and effort into it, that calls for a reception by the House without in any way trying to stifle the mover of the motion. I defend here my right to speak on this subject and on any other subject that comes before us as a representative assembly and I defend especially my right to speak on agriculture.
The Minister referred here to those who "talk as theorists and idealists — I would say much of it pretence"; in other words we were castigated because we are thinking of the problems of the country and are prepared to try to seek the causes of those problems and to discuss them with those in authority, with those in rural organisations and others in the hope that out of discussion some solution may be obtained. That is a most valuable right and we cannot in pursuance of this right allow ourselves to be put off by jeers at the fact that we have left the land or that, because we have made good in some profession, we cannot have any views on the land as such. I repudiate the idea that a member of this Seanad should in any way be restricted in this fashion. I have very happy memories here of discussions. The most pleasant memory I have got was of a discussion—
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
Before the Senator becomes entirely nostalgic I would ask him to come back to the motion.
This is relevant to the motion in that it deals with agriculture and on one occasion we paid a tribute to our present President who gave a most wonderful display to the Seanad and who satisfied us all that he was considering sympathetically and carefully the various points of view that we put up and that he felt we had contributed something by that discussion just as we feel we are contributing something by moving this motion.
Again on the question of farm apprenticeship, it was not today or yesterday I became interested in this matter. My interest began when from my very early years I had the benefit of being raised on a farm in Limerick and, not alone that, but of taking part in all the operations on that farm and in being part of what I would like to feel was a highly progressive farming family and still a very progressive farming family in that region.
I had many discussions on farm apprenticeship with the late Senator Seán Moylan, ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam, who was exceedingly keen on this idea of farm apprenticeship and himself contributed many valuable ideas to it. He saw that the kernel of the whole thing was the necessity to ensure that we have plenty of young men coming on the land, young men with ability, young men who will be trained for the future and will be given the opportunity of owning some of the land of Ireland. That is what he saw and what he wanted.
It was suggested here that because agreement has been reached I should not have moved the motion, that there was something wrong in moving the motion at this stage. I want to deal with this matter of agreement. It is important to realise that if an organisation or a group come to the Government with a scheme like farm apprenticeship and they are looking for something comprehensive and the Government say: "Paragraph (a) is out; paragraph (b) costs money — that is out; paragraph (c) is out because that entails new legislation; paragraph (d) is out because it cannot be done," and at the very end they say: "Yes, we shall give you something under (z)", that is not agreement but the organisation concerned will take whatever is given and reserve their right to look for the rest, to advocate the wider and more comprehensive scheme unless the Government in their discussion with them have persuaded them that the rest of the scheme is not worth pursuing any further or that it would not be in the national interest to do so. Nobody can say that with regard to farm apprenticeship, and nobody can say that the whole problem has been solved, merely by the fact that 30 scholarships valued at £500 each, that is, £35,000 per annum, is set aside for this purpose.
We have every right, therefore, to discuss this matter. It is doubly urgent at the moment due to our efforts to join the European Economic Community. Two main principles which are activating thinking in the European Economic Community are dangerous for us. First of all, the European Economic Community is committed to providing for those living on the land standards approximating to those of people in industries. If that is not done the drift from the land will go too far. That is provided for in Europe by consolidating holdings, by decreasing the numbers on the land and by intensifying on the smaller farms. As I pointed out, what we need here is exactly the reverse of that because we cannot decrease further the numbers we have on the land except at our peril. We have fewer workers per 1,000 acres than anywhere else in Europe. In fact the State next to us has almost twice as many workers per 1,000 acres, that is, France. Consequently we are an exception to that policy which is all right for Europe in general but would be detrimental to us.
Our average farm size being, as I pointed out, the second largest in Europe, we are placed in the large farm category in Europe. This means, in any rational planning for Europe, it would be sought to push to us the produce regarded as being most suitable for large farms. In particular that holds the danger of trying to turn dairying acres into beef producing acres. That would probably be all right for individual farmers who might make a better living than they make now on those 50 to 100 acre farms but the national interest would suffer greatly. It would mean that we would not be getting from our agriculture in the Common Market the output of which we know it is capable, because any significant shift of pattern from dairying to beef production would reduce our output potential at a time when we need every help and assistance possible from the agricultural arm of our economy for our industrial arm which is facing the difficult task of meeting free competition.
The key to all that is the provision of trained young men to work on the farms of the country and become owners at a later stage. Nothing else will give us the necessary means to tackle the problem. I was criticised very much for having said that we need not be guided by what we see elsewhere, that we should not look around us and see the tendencies elsewhere. Obviously, I made no such sweeping statement; I just simply said that we should beware of any facile comparisons. The facile comparison of which I set out to show the error was: "Do not worry about the drift from the land because it is happening everywhere. It is happening in Europe and America so do not worry about it here."
That is all right if you have a population on the land from which a drift can come but, when you find that our population on the land is less than half that in any comparable country in Western Europe, you realise the falseness of taking refuge in such simplified comparisons as: "We are drifting; everywhere else is drifting too, so we need not worry." I am not saying that we will be able to stop it which is a different thing, but we should not acquiesce to it. We should see it for what it is. The figures I gave show that the population on the land will be reduced to between 150,000 and 200,000 people and that is something none of us want to see happen in this country. I do not think there will be a country to worry about when the population on the land has gone down to between 150,000 and 200,000.
Senator Seán Ó Donnabháin, while going a bit of the way, got very confused about the position of the National Farmers' Association and asked why they could not do this. Anything as big as farm apprenticeship must be a co-operative effort by all concerned. It needs the very best possible help and co-operation of the National Farmers' Association, Macra na Feirme, the Government, the co-operative movement and any other it can get. Consequently we cannot expect an infant organisation which is five years in being like the National Farmers' Association to be able to wield the power or find the financial resources possible for the English Farmers' Union which is there for, at least, ten times that length of time. Instead of criticising them on this motion, we should pay a tribute to the great work they have done and say that the hope for the future lies with them and with the active organisation of agriculture as a whole.
A great deal of play was made of the fact that I said I was glad in one sense that the NFA recommendations had not been accepted completely because I disagreed with one or two of their recommendations, in particular the one dealing with the amount of State supervision necessary in regard to education and the buying of land, but I do not see in any way how the Minister or anyone else can deduce from that that I was in profound disagreement with the NFA. I am not a member. I act as an independent and I criticised what I did not agree with in their recommendations at the Killiney conference and so did Lieut-General Costello who took more or less the same point of view as I did—that more could be left to private enterprise and that there could be more buying of land by the groups themselves rather than have the State come in as buying agency in all cases.
I think I have put the points on record. That is the best I can hope to do. I will conclude by saying that if the figures I have given showing the drift which is taking place at the moment, a drop of 4,000 to 6,000 a year in the numbers employed on the land, were the type that would mean a reduction from 380,000 to 350,000 or 320,000, it might be accepted as an ultimate figure if it meant full employment and better provisions for people on the land, but I have shown that worse. If it were possible today to go out and count the young men on the land, taking the 35 year old group, and find out how many there were of them, then the 34 year old group and each year in that way, you would find on average that there are not 3,000 in any of those age groups. Those especially between 20 and 35 are the people we rely on to be the future forward force in agriculture, but taking this number of 3,000 means that you are making provision and plans for an ultimate farm population of 150,000.
I should like somebody to be able to disprove my figures but I am afraid that nobody can disprove them because the figures speak for themselves. If that is what we are facing, if we are convinced that we will have a farming population of fewer than half our present number at the same time as we are entering the Common Market, surely the time is ripe to call crisis, to call for every resource of the organisations of Church and State to turn the minds of the young lads at school, the 12, 13 and 14 year olds, back to the possibility of a career on the land of Ireland rather than in the streets of Liverpool and London. Let them see that on the land of Ireland there is pleasant and important work to be done. It is rewarding work. But no promise of wage or salary will hold the majority of young men, unfortunately.
There must be that fulfilment for them of seeing the possibility of one day owning the land for themselves. That possibility could be capitalised, in fact, right today if the country were organised on the type of credit union basis. You would find that scarcely a private buyer could compete in the market against the organised buying power of a group of young men banded together into a credit union and, of course, with some of their own savings behind it. That is the kind of effort we need, and such an effort would bring out the very best in our young men, involving as it would a savings scheme, an educational period spread over a number of years developed through the comradeship of night classes, and going on eventually to the hope of becoming owners themselves. That has inspired young men in all countries, and we should be no exception.
The plain fact is that, almost alone in Western Europe, we are without a farming ladder for the young man who has not got inherited wealth and has nothing but his desire to become a farmer and to work a farm with his own two hands in the period before him. Other countries in which a landlord system prevails to a fair extent have got land for letting available and the concern of the landlord in those places is to get good young men who will be able to work the farms. Fortunately or unfortunately, we have not got such openings here. The way of the future is not a return to landlordism, but in 20 years' time will we have it to say that many skilled young men were available in their late 20s or early 30s but were not able to get places? If that were so then there would be a case for some step to try to provide farms for them, and that might be by encouraging some of the larger farmholders, through taxation incentives, or otherwise to take a portion of their farms and rent it to one of these.
I do not see why on farms of either 300 or 400 acres, if the national good demanded it, the taking off of 40 or 50 acres would in itself be any tremendous inroad into the right of private property, provided that arrangement was made on a basis that gave proper compensation to the owner or continued on a rental basis, whichever proves the most suitable.
I have pleasure in moving this motion as an effort to alert the Seanad to the dangers that are really there, and I ask it in all seriousness to ponder gravely on the figures I have placed before it. Unless Senators are satisfied to accept a population of 150,000 to 200,000 people on the land of Ireland, we must see what we can do in the very short time at our disposal to try and staunch this drift, and prevent us becoming what the planners of the European Economic Community would like us to be — a very highly scientific beef ranch for Western Europe. There is a future in that undoubtedly for those who man the beef ranches, but there is not a future in a small country like ours to depend for its primary industry on such beef ranches.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
Is the motion withdrawn?
No. No reasonable person can disagree with it.
Might I point out that what the motion wants is already being done, and that there is no sense in moving this motion?
If the leader of the House had read my contribution on the last day or listened to it, he would have found that 30 scholarships of £500 each is surely not a dynamic farm apprenticeship scheme within the terms of reference put forward in the motion.
I was suffering for an hour listening to you on the last time. You do not have to repeat it.
Might I point out to the Leader of the House that the Irish Press three years ago saw fit to provide space for 12 articles by me on this topic?
I have no control over the Irish Press.
Is it not most unfair for the Leader of the House to say that he was suffering for an hour listening to a Senator on the last day? If we had not men like Senator Professor Quinlan in this House we would not have to meet half a dozen times in the year.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
The suffering of an Seanadóir Ó Maoláin, perhaps, was not necessarily associated with Senator Quinlan. It may have been in connection with something else.
Then if that is so, it is a different question. You are certainly right, Sir.
It was an aggravation of suffering.
Question put.
The Seanad divided: Tá, 14; Níl, 25.
Tá
- Carton, Victor.
- Crowley, Patrick.
- Davidson, Mary F.
- Desmond, Cornelius.
- Fitzgerald, John.
- Fitzpatrick, Thomas J.
- L'Estrange, Gerald.
- McDonald, Charles.
- Mannion, John.
- Murphy, Dominick F.
- Ó Conalláin, Dónall.
- Prendergast, Micheál A.
- Quinlan, Patrick M.
- Ross, J. N.
Níl
- Boland, Gerald.
- Brennan, John J.
- Browne, Seán.
- Cole, John C.
- Connolly O'Brien, Nora.
- Farrell, Joseph.
- Fitzsimons, Patrick.
- Flanagan, Thomas P.
- Hayes, Seán.
- Hogan, Daniel.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Moloney, Daniel J.
- Mooney, Joseph M.
- Nash, John Joseph.
- Nolan, Thomas.
- Ó Ciosáin, Éamon.
- Ó Donnabháin, Seán.
- Ó Maoláin, Tomás.
- O'Reilly, Patrick.
- Ó Siochfhradha, Pádraig.
- O'Sullivan, Ted.
- Ruane, Thomas.
- Ryan, Eoin.
- Ryan, Patrick W.
- Sheldon, William A. W.
Tellers: Tá: Senators Crowley and L'Estrange; Níl: Senators Farrell and Ó Donnabháin.
Question declared lost.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
Item No. 6.
I should like to explain that, due to the fact that Private Members' Business is now being taken in the Dáil from 6 p.m. to 7,30 p.m., the Minister will be obliged to be in attendance in the Dáil and, at 7.30 p.m. unfortunately, he has another engagement. I wonder would it meet the convenience of Senator Prendergast if we were to postpone his motion until the 19th?
That is all right. Motion No. 6 adjourned to 19th December, 1962.
The Seanad adjourned at 6 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 19th December, 1962.