One more line.
And if he does, then possibly the time is not yet too late, but if he does not then on his head and his head alone be it.
That was six months ago. We now know that the Minister failed to comply with the simple request I and many other people have made since to negotiate with the veterinary profession. The present Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries met the veterinary profession on at least three occasions. On 29th May, 1973, he promised that he would give four months' notice before any changes in the schemes which would affect the business of practitioners in any way would be introduced. On 29th September, 1973, he spoke at the annual dinner of the Irish Veterinary Association. He said and I quote:
We depend on the veterinary practitioners and I have faith in their ability to deliver the goods. As long as they continue to do so, I offer them full involvement in State programmes for disease eradication over at least the next five years, and I would encourage them to make their plans accordingly so that their State work and private practice can be serviced adequately and expeditiously.
The Minister again met the Veterinary Union on 16th May, 1975, when he informed them that it was his intention to appoint lay technicians. When questioned, he made it perfectly clear that these were not proposals, but decisions. When the Veterinary Union informed him that they would take this matter back to the Union, the Minister gave them clearly to understand that it was immaterial what they thought. He was the boss and he was going to play the game as he saw fit. As far as I understand he even walked out of that discussion.
This demonstrates clearly that the negotiations and consultations he promised did not take place. He did not listen to their points of view. He made a decision—he was going to appoint the lay technicians, irrespective of promises he had made in the past. The Minister has brought on this dispute deliberately because he felt we would not be able to meet the regulations and the requirements of the EEC. Brucellosis would not be eradicated by 1977, not through any actions of the vets, but through the failure of the Department first of all to buy up the reactors that have caused such a problem and, secondly, to the failure of the Department to have the tests carried out as expeditiously as possible.
Only last year veterinary practitioners were informed that they should not carry out more than 3 per cent of their tests in any one week because the laboratory could not handle the test samples. Because of the failure of the Minister to make proper provision for an increased handling of samples, the brucellosis eradication scheme was slowed down. Because of the failure of the Department to buy up reactors, herds were allowed to run loose and to transmit the disease to neighbouring farms. In 1977 the Minister will be able to say: "Ah, but if the vets in May, 1975, had not gone on strike we would have succeeded in clearing brucellosis."
The Minister is appointing lay technicians apparently for two reasons. One, he claims that it is cheaper and, secondly, the work would be done much more expeditiously. If we examine the economics of lay technicians it would be easy to prove that it will cost between 50 per cent and 100 per cent more to have lay technicians.
Allowing for the average payment of a lay technician of £2,363, travelling expenses on the Six County scale of £20 per week in 1974, at 1974 prices of £20 per week, social welfare benefits and so forth, a technician will cost £3,812. Also allowing for the employment of a veterinary inspector to supervise five lay technicians, the payment for that veterinary inspector would come to £1,196, a grand total of £5,008. A lay inseminator in the Six Counties bleeds 250 cattle per week, and on those figures it transpires that it will cost 42.6p per sample as against 43p per sample for private practitioners. The Minister will argue that the veterinary surgeons have a claim before the National Prices Commission at the moment, but so also have the Department officials, the lay inseminators, and an increase of 24 per cent must be taken into consideration. This does not take into consideration the various other expenses that a lay inseminator would have— travelling expenses, extra administrative work, all that has been borne by private practitioners.
In this morning's Independent we read that one veterinary surgeon in this country was paid £24,000 in one year. I checked up on that vet to discover that there are six veterinary surgeons in his practice, there are six laymen working for those six veterinary surgeons, and there are three girls in the office operating that practice. All this is taken into consideration. I can speak with reasonable experience in this field. When one talks of the work of a lay technician, I realise fully the extra costs that will be saddled on the Department. A lay technician goes out to take samples—all farms are not ranches such as exist in Meath, Kildare and Tipperary.
When one considers the western seaboard, Cavan, Monaghan, one realises that they consist in the main of small farms unmanned, farmed by widows in some cases and so forth. I am the son of a veterinary surgeon who has long since retired—and I had better say before anybody else does that I have no vested interest in this matter.
I spent three years working with my father on the bovine tuberculosis eradication scheme. I can recall going into byres, not alone doing the clerical work, but catching the cattle by the nose, holding them for him, doing the bookwork and sitting up until 3 o'clock in the morning to do the various reports that were necessary at that time. Will a lay-technician employed by the Department go out at 7 o'clock in the morning and stay working until 9 o'clock at night? Will he go out on Saturdays? Will he catch the animals and hold them? He certainly will not. He will not be in the job five minutes until he will demand, and will have to be given, an employee to do this work for him. He will also have clerical assistance. When all this is taken into consideration, and added to the 42.6p I have mentioned, it must be obvious to anyone who has any understanding of the matter, that blood samples by lay inseminators will cost from 75p to £1 per sample at present prices. It is absolutely ludicrous for the Minister for Agriculture to say that this will save money. I read that he said it would cost £2.5 million less.
It has been suggested that lay technicians would do this work much quicker than veterinary surgeons. I can recall the bovine tuberculosis eradication scheme again and the lists sent out to veterinary surgeons with instructions that these lists would have to be completed by the 1st July, 1st August or 1st September and, if it was not done, the work would be taken from them. That is the way the Department of Agriculture operated that scheme. That is the way the Department should operate this scheme.
The lay technician, the civil servant, will leave his home at 9 o'clock in the morning and drive 20 or 30 miles to his base. When it comes to 5 o'clock in the evening, irrespective of whether the neighbouring farm has to be bled or not, he will get into his car; he is finished; he is a civil servant and he will go home. When Saturday morning comes he will stay in his bed. The veterinary surgeon in private practice will be up at 7 o'clock in the morning and will still be at work at 9 o'clock at night. It is common sense to anyone who understands this problem and if the Minister is really serious about this matter, that the private veterinary practitioners are the people who can do this work effectively.
But there is something much more important than that. The lay technician goes to the farm. What training has he had? He has been taken into the Department because he spent one year in an agricultural college. I am a past pupil of two agricultural colleges and I can say without fear that I would not be qualified in any way to give the advice to farmers they need. If there is a cow in a field that has aborted the night before what will the lay technician advise the farmer? He will advise the farmer to get a veterinary surgeon. When the veterinary surgeon comes, now the farmer will have to pay him. Rather than pay him, the farmer may take a chance and may let it go.
If a cow has retained its cleaning for an undue length of time, obviously the expert advice of the veterinary surgeon is absolutely essential. The lay technician will not be qualified to give advice of this kind. The Minister has stated that nurses can take blood samples. True, but nurses have been trained for four or five years and are highly specialised. The Minister said in the course of his remarks that he could have lay technicians in three or four weeks. In other words, he is going to spend four weeks training technicians and suddenly they become experts. These are the people that we are depending on to clear this country of brucellosis by 1977. The Minister has made a grave mistake and it is not too late yet for him to do something about it.
I listened to him replying to questions in the Dáil this evening and he said that so far no lay samplers have been brought in. This is true because the Minister has not got any lay samplers. In view of the current dispute how does he propose getting them? He also said that the statement that he had had no negotiations or discussions was untrue. I do not know what his interpretation of negotiations or discussions is. Does he believe that by walking into the veterinary profession, sitting down and saying to them, "this is my decision and that is it"—if that is his interpretation of negotiation and discussion then I hope he never has to come up against Senator Mullen, Senator Kennedy, Senator Harte or some of the other trade unionists in this House.
The publicity given to the veterinary profession has not been good. I can recall a period in this country when veterinary surgeons were living in poverty. I know from my own home in the thirties, forties and fifties when the farmers had not got the money, that the veterinary surgeons continued to work for very little. They put the future of this country and the future of Irish agriculture before anything else. I can also recall in my own home, veterinary surgeons going out knowing that they would not and could not be paid, but rather than allow an animal to die under those circumstances, they continued to do the work. That was the record of the veterinary surgeons of this country.
Because of the tuberculosis and brucellosis schemes, they were able to bring in partners, appoint assistants, and give a service to farmers at a fee much less than they would charge if these schemes were not in vogue. It has been suggested that the appointment of lay inseminators would provide extra employment. If the Minister goes ahead with this scheme, if he takes the brucellosis scheme entirely from the veterinary surgeons, it is quite obvious that these partnerships will be dissolved, the assistants will be paid off; the laymen working for veterinary surgeons throughout this country will be paid off and the girls doing office work for these veterinary surgeons would be paid off.
Not alone did the Minister fail to discuss this problem properly with the Veterinary Union of Ireland and with private practitioners, but he failed to discuss it with the veterinary officers of his own Department. If discussions took place between the veterinary officers and the veterinary surgeons a compromise could be reached and the veterinary surgeons would be prepared to work with laymen to clear the country of this disease before it is too late. We all realise how serious this is, not alone because of the unemployment it may create, but because there are more serious aspects. The Minister implied that if this brucellosis eradication scheme is left to the veterinary surgeons, we will not meet the deadline.
I submit that we will not meet the deadline because of the failure of the Department to provide the proper testing facilities for the blood samples, their failure to ensure that when the tares are issued to the veterinary surgeons, they can carry on as expeditiously as possible, and particularly because of the failure to have reactors cleared immediately. It is disgraceful that in parts of the country reactors were allowed to roam not alone the farms of their owners but on neighbouring farms and spread this terrible disease to neighbouring farms.
I am personally aware that this disease spread in certain areas because of the failure of the Department to re-act. The Minister would be doing a much better service to this country if he solved that problem and left the veterinary surgeons in his own Department and the private practitioners to solve theirs.
