National Agricultural Advisory, Education and Research Authority Bill, 1976: Committee Stage.

Sections 1 to 6, inclusive, agreed to.

SECTION 7.

Question proposed: "That section 7 stand part of the Bill."

Mr. Lenihan

Section 7 introduces for the first time one of the many matters to which I objected on the Second Stage and to which I will continue to object here in subsequent sections dealing with the excessive control now exercised by both Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Finance in literally translating the Agricultural Institute, as it has been known heretofore and as it is dissolved by subsequent section 10, into a mere agency of the Department for all practical purposes. Our main opposition to the Bill on Second Stage was directed towards this factor of very extreme bureaucratic control exercised through the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Agriculture on the whole operation of this new agency— I call it that because that is all it now is—at every level. An institute that had for over 20 years exercised an honourable autonomy and independence in the discharge of its functions, particularly in the research area which demanded this flexibility and autonomy in order to be effective is now, under this Bill, and particularly by this section, being translated into a mere executive agency of the Minister's Department.

It is quite clear from the White Paper that was issued prior to the preparation of this Bill and from the debate that took place in the Dáil and the Seanad during the legislation which set up the Agricultural Institute that everybody took the view—I take it the Minister still takes the view; he did not refer to this aspect at all in his reply on the Second Stage—that autonomy and independence in regard to research and investigation is all-important in an institute of this kind. If an issue of this kind is going to be tied both in terms of finance and in terms of decision-making to the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Finance, then the very important element in legitimate research, legitimate investigation, legitimate testing, the essence of any such operation, will go by the board and the institute will be translated into an executive agency. That executive agency will be largely just a section of the Department of Agriculture functioning basically at the whim of the Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Finance.

It is for that reason that we are opposing this section. The fact is that every enactment set out in the Fourth Schedule is repeated. This, of course, is one of the basic sections in the Bill taken in conjunction with section 10, which we will be opposing shortly, in which the actual institute itself is dissolved, to use the legal phraseology. Therefore, the effect of section 7, and section 10 is effectively to dissolve the Agricultural Institute, as we knew it heretofore and then, linked in with the remaining sections of the Bill, effectively to bring in an executive agency of the Department of Agriculture that will be tied to the Department and to the financial exigencies of the Minister for Finance in regard to its future research programmes for the benefit of Irish agriculture.

Dr. West

I also wish to oppose this section and the whole spirit behind the dissolution of the Agricultural Institute and the effective establishment of firm departmental control over what was up to now a body corporate. Senator Lenihan has made the case particularly well and I would just like—again speaking from the university point of view—to reiterate the need, as I see it and as very many other people see it, of independence for the researcher and freedom of research in agricultural matters is just as important as in any other sphere of scientific investigation.

Many people have pointed out in the Second Stage debate on the Bill what a fine reputation has been established by An Foras Talúntais, The Institute has an international reputation as a research body in agriculture and is something of which we in this country can be justly proud. I would like to pay a very warm tribute to the director, Dr. Tom Walsh, who has done such a tremendous job in building up the institute and making it such a vital force in innovation in Irish agricultural circles. Nobody knows better than the Minister how important this is in the present situation, in the EEC context.

If I might just digress for a moment, I would like to pay the Minister and his officials a very genuine tribute which they deserve for their outstanding work in Brussels. Agriculture is our most important industry. In almost every respect our Agriculture Minister is our most important Minister in Brussels; and Deputy Clinton, sometimes by using the soft pedal and sometimes by using what appears to be ruthless methods with his colleagues when the need arises in Brussels, has been extremely successful.

One of the reasons our economic situation is not a great deal worse is because the farming industry is an extremely buoyant one at the moment. I have experience of it myself. I live in a farming area in East Cork which has always been a very strong area for mixed farming, barley and the dairy industry. I do not have to go outside the door very far when at home to see what a healthy state the industry is in, and this reflects tremendous credit on on the Minister. There are now great incentives for our farmers to become more efficient, to use more scientific methods to increase their output. There is no doubt that the Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Clinton, has been, to a considerable extent, responsible for our good position with his hard-nosed negotiations in Europe.

Having paid that tribute, which is absolutely genuine, I would rate Deputy Clinton as the most successful Minister in the present Government— and I do not go through this rating that some of the Sunday newspapers do. I would so rate him precisely because of the success of his negotiations in Europe. I think they are absolutely crucial to the whole country. Having said that, I feel the Minister has transferred the hard-nosed approach he has used in Europe to the local scene in this Bill, and I am not at all happy about it.

I do not see any reason why we should bring an institute which has achieved an international reputation, which is working so well, inside the ambit of the Department of Agriculture, which is essentially what this Bill is doing. For my money, that is what it is doing. This move has been opposed by numerous farming interests. It is a difficult technical point to get across: it is not the sort of thing that will hit the headlines on the newspapers, a reorganisation of a research institute. Who knows whether it will be better under the civil service than under the independent set-up which currently exists? It is one of the important, philosophical points we have to consider in this House. For very many reasons I dislike seeing extension of civil service control over autonomous bodies. Particularly in the area of research this is something to be deplored. I do not see why the institute could not be left as an independent body. I know, and everybody interested in agriculture knows, that there has been friction between the institute and the Department. That is not always a bad thing because the Department have one job to do and the institute has a totally different one.

In this Bill and the particular provisions we are talking about in section 7, it seems to me in many ways that the Department is issuing the coup de grâce to the independence and freedom of the institute and, personally, I totally oppose that. Senator Butler in his speech on the Second Stage said that we must not criticise the Department. That is absolute nonsense but perhaps he meant that we should not criticise the Minister for Agriculture when the Coalition is in Government. That is a straight-forward party political point, but we are the people who have to decide where departmental control stops and where independent institutions begin. As Members of the Oireachtas, we have to decide this, and of course we can criticise the Department and their policies. I have always said and will consistently say that we have an outstandingly good civil service in this country. We have a great many talented people in the civil service. Perhaps in some ways it is too good as it wishes to extend its control outside the areas in which it should be legitimately involved. I think this is a specific case of extension of ministerial power and authority over an independent body which has up to now done a tremendous job.

The Minister in his speeches on the Second Stage in the Dáil or here did not indicate how the research work of the institute will be improved by this administrative move. I can see many reasons why the research atmosphere in an institute as such could disimprove if it comes totally under civil service control. Of course the argument will be that the establishment of the authority is not going to spancel the research people in the institute, is not going to give the civil service control; but, in fact, it is a move which is designed to do that among other things and I totally oppose it. Here we are talking about a very big organisation. I do not know what the total staff membership is—the Minister can give me that—but last week there was a letter from 170 or 190 members of staff of the institute deploring this move. That appeared in the newspapers the day we debated this measure last week. The Minister then said that was only a small proportion of the staff. Obviously, it is a very big staff, 500, 600 or 700?

Mr. Clinton

2,500

Dr. West

Bigger still. This is a big organisation and it is a powerful one. Obviously if an organisation like this is going to be worth its salt, if it is to generate ideas or if it is going to have its own administrative structures then, of course, there will be friction between it and the Department. Everybody who has been in this game knows quite well that this has been going on for years, but this is a good thing. Elimination of this friction will mean eliminating a lot of the tension which goes to make a contribution to our society. There is no argument which anybody has produced up to now to point out how this reorganisation, this dissolution of the institute or the repeals in this section are going to improve the research, the quality of the work or the feedback. Perhaps there is integration of advisory and educational services but if you wanted to do that, why not take these services away from the Department altogether and put them under An Foras Talúntais and thereby make it bigger and more powerful? It has shown it can do the job; why spancel it as we are doing?

I have looked at the speeches that were made by the politicans who set up the institute 20 years ago. The debates both in Dáil and Seanad were fascinating. Senator Lenihan was here for the Seanad debate on that occassion and he has referred to it. I would like to refer to the Dáil debate, which he has also mentioned, and I would like to refer to Deputy James Dillon, one of our distinguished politicans. I would like to quote what he says about this independence. He is talking in a general way in the Second Stage speech about an institute, the setting up of it and how it should be run. I quote from column 864 of the Official Reports of the Dáil debate of 21st November, 1957:

I agree with him entirely when he says that the whole scheme of the Bill revolves around the council and it is not too much to say that the potential value of the institute will be directly proportionate to the efficiency of the council in discharging the heavy responsibility entrusted to it. That is profoundly true. I have always believed, and I still believe, that neither Parliament, the Government nor the Minister can run a university nor, indeed, any teaching establishment. You have got to try to get the best governing body you can. You have got to give them the resources and then you have got to trust them to do the job and if they do not do it there is not very much you can do about it.

Deputy Dillon is absolutely clearly in favour of an independent research institute without question. The other interesting speech on that occasion, not in the Dáil but in the Seanad, was made by Deputy de Valera and he went at great length into the need for an agricultural research institute and the need for it to be independent of ministerial control. What are we now doing here? We are totally reversing that position. I am totally opposed to this. I do not think it is a party political issue. I bet that if you took a head count—perhaps not a free vote of the other side but what we wanted last week, a secret ballot— there would be people hopping up all over the House on the other side and they would all oppose it. But, of course, they must keep the heads down now. There is an election coming up. You never know, when you stick your head over ground if it might be shot off and that will not do you any good. However, the point is, it is not a political issue. I do not think it is a question of one party versus another. It is really the Members of the Oireachtas, asking how far will civil service control go. I say it should stop here: the buck stops here. The civil service control should stop before section 7. I am totally opposed to this whole idea of dissolution of the institute and therefore to section 7.

Professor Quinlan

I remember quite well the debate that went on 20 year ago and I am surprised that Senator West's perusal of the debates did not extend to the contributions that I and some of the others made on that occasion.

Dr. West

I had not time, Senator, but I knew you were coming after me and I was sure you were going to get your dig in.

Professor Quinlan

Anyway, I sympathise very strongly with the Minister and with the necessity to co-ordinate the advisory service because we all realise that the work at county level as it is has been carried on has been rather wasteful of resources, especially in the modern climate. Integration with research I think could have been better. So I sympathise very strongly as regards the problem that is there. The reorganisation as far as it affects the advisory services will do an immense amount of good and will also probably enable the sharing of specialist advisers on a more regional basis. Again, all to the good. But I am rather unhappy about the position of the research side and I hope as the Bill progresses that we will be able to tease that out a bit more and give more guarantees.

I would have no real worry about the research side if I were assured that Deputy Clinton would be Minister for Agriculture for the next 20 years but I think that is probably asking a bit too much. I can recall indeed in my own time here in the Seanad at least one, if not two, Ministers for Agriculture, in whom I had no confidence whatsoever to restrain the natural tendency of the Department of Agriculture to take over completely. That is not a failing of the Department of Agriculture alone. Every Department of State, not merely here but in England and everywhere else has it. It is simply a question of control, and that is opposed to real progress, enlightenment and statesmanship. It means devolution. It means giving to other bodies the resources and the facilities to carry out their job.

There is nothing in which the Department of Agriculture are more lacking than in research experience: it is not their job. They are not recruited on the basis of the research they have done. Therefore it is hard to ask people recruited in that way to have an understanding of what research is all about. That goes for research in all areas, whether in agriculture or in industry or indeed in science, because basically it is a rather long-term investment. It is one where you cannot demand instant results. You may have to wait a while before something really good is produced; but when it is produced it more than pays for all the effort that went into it in the past. You have had your failure but that is the price that you pay for the success. Therefore, it is difficult for the ordinary administrator, who wants things black and white, who wants things nine to five, who wants things covered by memos and so on, to understand the research mentality and the research approach because the research man is always working on his problem. Even when he is asleep, he is working on the problem. I have done quite a bit of research myself and very often if you are lying in bed in the morning for an extra half hour there seems to be some process that operates. It is very often in that type of relaxed atmosphere you can see a way through problems that you were not able to see when you were bashing your head against it.

We are particularly lucky here with the Agricultural Research Institute because of the calibre and the training of the men who went into it. I think no consideration of this matter would be complete without paying tribute to the farsightedness of the American authorities who in 1954 and 1955 diverted some of counterpart funds to the development of agricultural research in this country. It was a most enlightened and far-sighted effort. It was the counterpart of the Marshall Aid that went to countries directly involved in the war. The American authorities were very insistent all through the fifties on the necessity for autonomy, the necessity for freedom from any control, especially hidden control by the Department of Agriculture.

Dr. West

Hear, hear.

Professor Quinlan

It is against the spirit of those who contributed so generously the funds for the institute to reorganise it as is being done unless we can get some very specific assurances and statutory safeguards built into the Bill as it passes through.

Another piece of farsightedness on the part of the Americans was their insistence on quality and training for the men. The result was that the funds as provided made it possible for some of our young Irish graduates to go to the best American universities, Ohio State, Cornell, Iowa, Kansas and others, where they made a tremendous reputation for themselves. Since then they have made a very big contribution here, and not alone to agriculture. Many of them have used their training to branch out into other areas as well. That is an invaluable resource. I can see the friction that would necessarily develop between that type of independent outlook, that type of challenging approach to problems, and the professional administration—not meaning any disparagement whatsoever of the professional administrators. They are in two altogether different games.

On the other hand, we need the product of research to be brought as quickly as possible into practice. There is a certain misconception at that level as to what is research. Research is not simply something that somebody else has done well or that we see done well in New Zealand or even on a good farm, on which we run a few trials and sell on that basis to the ordinary people. That is development. That is just selling to the stage beyond research. Research consists in efforts to develop better utilisation of grassland, efforts to breed better strains, to improve marketing, and efforts to improve and diversify the produce in which milk is used. All that needs autonomy. In that spirit I would hope to try to approach the present Bill and I have confidence in the openness and objectivity of the Minister.

The Minister will recall that, when he and I were quite a few years younger and were concerned with the foundation of the National Farmers' Association, we later became involved in a desperate stand to prevent the Department of Agriculture taking over the research and advisory services, getting control over the counterpart funds and over the institute to be built by them. At that stage the young National Farmers' Association, as it was then, set up an independent commission, a most extraordinary effort. They acted fully in the manner of a commission. Credit goes to Professor Louis Smith, Mr. Seán Healy, Mr. Paddy O'Keeffe and others who were involved in that. The Minister was close by in the wings and very sympathetic to the efforts of that date. I would hate to think that we would do anything to undo that good.

I know the Minister's mind is to give research the freedom it should have. I hope, as we tease our way slowly, painfully but carefully, through the present Bill we will put in safeguards that will meet, on the one hand, the Minister's desirable and laudable wish to integrate services and maximise the service to agriculture and, on the other hand, that will guarantee the freedom so necessary for research.

Mr. Ferris

I had a lot of personal sympathy with the sentiments expressed by many of the previous speakers. Indeed, having discussed the problems that the staff foresaw in this situation I began to have still further sympathy for their point of view. I have sat down and coldly calculated what the Minister has been trying to do in this section and the section dealing with the abolition of the institute. "Abolishing" is a very strong word. This section is not really abolishing the institute; it is abolishing the Act that set it up. The Minister in his reply to the Second Stage satisfied me that this is what he is about.

I referred on the Second Stage to the fact that the institute, as it now stands under this statute, is an autonomous body; but I reiterated in my contribution how difficult it was for me, as a democrat, to justify the word "autonomous". It could be an excellent opportunity, I suppose a dream, if those of us responsible for public funds did not have to be accountable. Not being accountable is autonomy, in that one can carry on regardless, if one has sufficient funds to carry on. I do not suppose that that is possible in this day and age when every pound we spend must be accounted for through the system of public accountability but also to the electorate. The Minister, in his reply on the Second Stage, reiterated that consultations go on every year, even as it is, with the Institute, which now stands as an autonomous body—they are autonomous only within the amount of money available to them.

Research is the area that worries me particularly. I have some little experience in this field. Because of its very nature it must certainly remain independent of any dictation or trend. Only the people engaged in research realise how a particular research project is progressing. Agricultural or veterinary research either in the field or in the laboratory obviously needs a lot of independence. The Minister satisfied me in his contribution that this independence enjoyed by the institute since it was set up will be retained, as will its freedom of movement and its freedom of research in the field in which it is currently engaged. Of course, it must have discussions beforehand on the spending of public money.

As I say, it would be absolutely ideal if none of us had to account for anything we do with public money. The staff certainly are really concerned in this area and I have had consultations and discussions with them. I have listened to their point of view. Naturally they have worked within a vacuum, so to speak, up to now.

The statute setting up the institute is now to be abolished and the institute is to be accountable to this board, but I honestly feel that the Minister has no intention of stopping any good work. Indeed, from my knowledge of the man I know he is keen to progress in this area. If agriculture and all the industries allied to it are to succeed we must have research. We must have as much money as possible available for research, whether this is State money or money that is put in to it by concerns that feel that investment in this field is imperative for the future of our nation. There is a tremendous future for research and I have no qualms of conscience now that I have considered all the aspects of it.

As I mentioned at the opening of the Second Stage, I was concerned that this was an emotive subject. Having listened to the Minister's reply—I have no doubt he will have more to say on it just now—I would be satisfied that the institute can and will function as efficiently as it has. Indeed, if it needs to be put on record, I should like also to congratulate the staff and their director on the excellent work they have done and, I have no doubt, will continue to do in the future.

Mr. Cowen

We on this side of the House are totally opposed to this section, particularly on the basis that it repeals the legislation setting up An Foras Talúntais. Senator West has conveyed to the House the thinking of the late Mr. de Valera and Mr. Dillon on this institute. They thought it was highly important that the Agricultural Institute should have total independence to function properly. The present Minister in his speech in the Dáil on this Bill clearly stated that he thought the Agricultural Institute had done a wonderful amount of work down through the years. He had great praise for them in every respect. If that is the case, why make this drastic change in regard to their autonomy and total independence? The word "research" itself clearly highlghts the importance of their independence to function properly.

At this point I should like to congratulate the Agricultural Institute on their wonderful work through the past 19 years. I think it is a retrograde step on the part of the Minister to take that independence from the Agricultural Institute and hand over control to a board of 24 members. None of us here knows who these people will be. Judging from the experience of the present Government in regard to the formation of specific boards, we are all well aware that it will be politially rigged. Who are those people to tell the highly-talented men in the Agricultural Institute what they should do and what they should not do? This is what will be done through this legislation. The institute itself will be dictated to in a sense by the members of the board. This is something that should not happen. We on this side of the House are totally opposed to it.

Mr. Butler

I have always had great respect for the research people in An Foras Talúntais and I have that respect for them today. I know of the work they have carried out in Moore-park and in many other stations. This Bill will improve that situation and not disimprove it. There will be a greater demand now for research because there will be a greater demand for production within the industry as a whole. That greater demand for production will create a greater demand for research.

If that is the interference that people are talking about, then it should be welcomed by all the farming organisations in the country. I do not think this is the interference that the Opposition are talking about. They are talking about interference by the Department of Agriculture themselves. I cannot see such interference taking place because there will be a board set up and we will have time to talk about that board when we reach the relevant section. If that board functions as I think it will, then interference by the Department of Agriculture will not take place. There will be a demand by that board for further researchs into different aspects of agriculture. That is the way I see the new institute working. It will be working for research and for the development of agriculture in this country.

Mrs. Robinson

Among the repeals in this section would be the Agriculture (An Foras Talúntais) Act, 1958, as has been pointed out. I share the view of the Senators who have pointed to the work of An Foras Talúntais as being very much a success story and an important contribution to agricultural research in this country. However, it is clear in the Government's White Paper that this would be one of the intentions of the Bill before us. On page 5 of the White Paper, under the heading "An Foras Talúntais", it is stated:

Under the changes now decided upon, the foundation of An Foras Talúntais will be transferred to the National Agricultural Advisory, Education and Research Authority which has been referred to above. The advisory and education service and An Foras Talúntais services will thus have a common direction, and a corps of specialist advisers located at convenient centres. This will ensure that research findings are brought without delay to advisers for dissemination to farmers, and problems requiring research carried in the reverse direction.

I share the concern that significant research should be carried out in this area, the most important area affecting the country, our most important industry, our most important resource as a people. I share the concern that adequate provision be made in this research. It is that point, and not so much the repeal of the 1958 Act and the bringing of An Foras Talúntais under this authority, that concerns me.

I am not satisfied that the other important aspects of the White Paper are, in fact, reflected in this Bill. Therefore, I view with some apprehension a section which repeals the 1958 Act, because I do not think that the objective of the White Paper of achieving a transfer of An Foras Talúntais with its full research status is going to be achieved. On page 6 of the White Paper, under the heading "Organisational Structure", it is stated:

6.2 National Level

Under the guidance of the Board, the Director (who will be assisted by Deputy Directors in appropriate areas, including particularly (i) advice and education and (ii) research) will be responsible for the direction and administration of the Authority and its overall effectiveness.

One of the features of An Foras Talúntais is that it has authority to research. Obviously it has a research budget. It has a clear provision in that area. That, I think, is not so clear under the subsequent terms of the Bill. Obviously we will raise this point again, but it is important in considering a section which proposes to repeal the 1958 Act. I should like to ask the Minister why there is not provision in the Bill for a deputy director of research, as was the intention in the White Paper, and why there is not provision for a separate research budget. Surely these are the minimum requirements in order to achieve the general purpose as stated in the White Paper? An Foras Talúntais is regarded in the White Paper itself as a successful institution of the State. If it is to be transferred without damaging it, without diminishing it, without undermining it, surely the other safeguards in the White Paper should be met before we decide to repeal an Act which has set up a successful research institute? I should like to know from the Minister at this stage why the provision for a deputy director of research and also the provision for a special budget for research have not been inserted in the Bill. I will at a later stage go into some detail on the importance of these two matters. I do not think it is appropriate under this section. I should like to know at this stage why these are not expressly inserted in the Bill.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

May I draw Senator Robinson's attention to amendments Nos. 7 and 8 under section 31, which I think deal specifically with the appointment of a deputy director.

Minister for Agriculture (Mr. Clinton)

I am a little bit disappointed that, at this stage of our efforts to explain what this Bill is all about, there still seems to be an amount of misunderstanding and concern. It may be a quite genuine misunderstanding.

The Bill is concerned with the improvement of services for agriculture. What I am really saying in the Bill is that we have a number of agencies, unco-ordinated and fragmented, providing services separately and independently for the agricultural industry. These agencies will do a much better job when they are brought together in one co-ordinated entire service working as a team for the agricultural industry. I explained that. It is, perhaps, a little unfortunate that some of the Senators who have spoken here today were not present when I was replying on the last occasion.

In my reply in the Dáil I explained this question and, If I may, I will quote from the Official Report, Volume 298, column 63:

...I am as fully convinced of the correctness of the course of action I am taking. I am putting the research services into the authority, side by side with the education and advisory services, because nothing gives the same amount of stimulation as research, and I want this stimulation to be as close as possible to the other services. I want to create an overall integrated service with willing teamwork between all the agencies concerned. I want to remove whatever barriers or lines of demarcation that may exist between them. I am conscious that research results are not applied on as many farms as I would like or as quickly as I would like them to be.

The Agricultural Institute is concerned mainly with applied research and it tackles practical problems of interest to different branches of the industry. It is also involved in development work of various kinds. The organisation which has been established will provide the presesnt institute staff, together with the staffs of the other services which are being transferred, with a more effective means of promoting the well-being of our agricultural industry than at present existing through those services working more or less independently or in isolation. In this integrated organisation they will be every bit as free to carry out their work as they have been in the past.

I am supposed to have taken complete freedom and autonomy away from the Agricultural Institute by integrating them with the other services. In fact, I think I have enlarged the scope of their work. I have brought in, for instance, plant breeding and veterinary research. In fact, they can do a certain amount of research in the educational area also. Therefore, I am not taking away from the Institute, which I have admired so much for so long. Nobody recognises better than I do the excellent work that has been done by the institute, and I agree wholeheartedly with everything that has been said about the director of the institute. I have said that myself on numerous occasions. Why should I try in any way to destroy the institute or take from their work or possibilities? In the discussion on the Bill setting up the institute, James Dillon said, and it was repeated today, that you must get the best governing body you can find and then give them the resources. That is exactly what we are setting out to do—get the best governing body we can find and give them the resources to the extent that that is possible.

In this legislation we are doing something which has never been done before: we have guaranteed that the separate money provided for the three departments which we are integrating will not be less in real terms in the first year. Such a guarantee has never been given before. How can the new board or the staff of the new board prepare a budget without preparing separate budgets for research, advisory work and for education? Of course their budget must be based on all these matters separately. They will retain their independence to the extent that that is desirable but they will not be enclosed in separate compartments.

Mention has been made of friction and that it may be a good thing. I disagree with this. I think friction has done an immense amount of harm in the past.

Dr. West

The Minister used it very effectively in Brussels.

Mr. Clinton

For the very reason that I felt that some friction existed, one of the first things I did in the Department of Agriculture was to say that the doors of this house must be open in future to everybody who has an interest in agriculture and who is providing a service for agriculture. I must say that I was pushing an open door, in fact, because I found that that was what the officials of the Department wanted too. I do not believe that anybody today in the institute will tell you that the Department of Agriculture is not an open door. Nobody in the advisory services or in the educational services will tell it to you either. The degree of co-operation and agreement between these various agencies and the people in the Department of Agriculture was never better, and that is the way I want it to continue. That is what we are trying to set out in this legislation. We want these people to work together and we want to give them an opportunity of crossing barriers without the fear of being accused of taking the other person's job or interfering in his work.

On the last day I was in the Seanad I had to quote section 12 of the Agriculture (An Foras Talúntais) Act, 1958, setting up An Foras and what was required of them then. As I have said, a number of Senators were not present. Let me quote it again. Section 12 (1) states:

For the purpose of assisting the Institute to carry out effectively its functions under this Act, there shall be paid to the Institute in every financial year, out of moneys provided by the Oireachtas, a grant towards the expenses of the Institute the amount of which shall be determined by the Minister for Finance in consultation with the Minister—— That is, the Minister for Agriculture. ——and the Council after due consideration of any information furnished under subsection (2) of this section.

Subsection (2) states:

The Council shall furnish to the Minister such information regarding its income and expenditure as he may from time to time require.

I maintain that under this Bill which we are trying to get through the Oireachtas we are not doing any more than that. We are asking them and saying to them: "You must come in, discuss your programme, get agreement on the finance and off you go and do your own job and we will interfere in no way with the day-to-day work of the Institute." We are not qualified to interfere with researchers; they have their own job. That is the intention in this Bill and I hope it will always remain so. It is a misunderstanding of what is in the legislation to say otherwise.

Dr. West

I am glad that the Minister has paid such a tribute to the institute. I know he has done this before but it raises a question. If he is so keen to integrate all these services why does he not just transfer the other two services to the institute as it now stands? The legislation would be less complex than this legislation. That, to me, seems to be the solution to this. Why not?

Mr. Clinton

Might I say to Senator West that this would be a very simple operation but then I would have the other agencies on my back and I would probably have the majority of the people here fighting on their behalf. Nobody seems to express any concern at all about the advisory services or the educational services. Up to the present not a word of concern was expressed about these.

Mr. Killilea

I think the point was put down very well by Senator Martin, but I want to go back first to what the Minister said, that the only logical reason that he is bringing the research sector into this authority is to make them accountable. It might be impressive to say that we spent £5.6 million last year on research, but it is a very small percentage of the gross national product. There is no doubt but that the Agricultural Institute have done a tremendous amount of work for agriculture. I believe that in his heart of hearts the Minister does not want to do this but it is being imposed upon him. He talks about the situation between An Foras Talúntais and the advisory service. He made the remark here that nobody seems to speak for the advisory service but I would remind the Minister we do not have an advisory service, that we have not an advisory service since the Department of Agriculture lobbed on top of every adviser here the task of the farm modernisation scheme. They left the advisory capacity then and went into the jobs that the Minister and his Department should have given then and still should to graded young fellows leaving school.

There is no advisory service now. If you were in the town of Tuam tomorrow morning you would stand in a queue for ten minutes to talk to those poor unfortunate fellows who have the boots of their cars full of files from which they are trying to arrange their day's work on this farm modernisation scheme. So if they want to get out of their situation, I do not blame them, because at this moment it is not an advisory service.

Just to repeat it: why not just extend the institute and transfer educational advisory services to that? I think that is the way to do it. Just to fill in the details for Senator Quinn, because we are talking about repeals of a 1958 An Foras Talúntais Act, and later on substituting the provisions in the Bill before us, and bringing out in the way so graphically described by Senators Killilea and Martin how the bureaucracy gets a grip on things and how when you give people less independence they spend more time filling in forms between nine and five and more time drinking outside those hours than they might have done heretofore.

The point is that there is a danger in an increase in bureaucracy. As Senator Killilea has pointed out, he finds people going around with the boots of their cars filled with files when of course they should be filled with manure if they are agricultural advisers involved in the industry. But it is the file mentality and the great file world we are facing. There are three sections in the 1958 Act, under which the institute was set up as a body corporate, which gave it a great measure of independence. That is now removed. A body corporate has legal ramifications which the authority does not have at all. It has a legal position which no authority has, and so the Minister has undermined the legal position of the institute. The second thing is that the original council, under section 5 of the 1958 Act, had 12 members and a chairman. How would you make a council less effective? Double its numbers—that is the simple way to do it. Then who controls the show? The Minister does. Now he has got 23 members and a chairman.

Section 7 of the 1958 Act, which we are about to repeal, allows the council to fix the director's salary. This was the right way to do things. I think we have had, in my time, when I know something about the issue, an outstanding director. He should be one of the most highly-paid people in Ireland. Now we are going to replace this with the Minister fixing his salary having consulted with the Minister for the Public Service. This is the sort of banal provision which is coming into all these Acts. If you want to get an outstanding individual to head a body like the Agricultural Research Institute, you should be prepared to pay him commensurate with his abilities and with the task he faces. Not likely. The spirit of the Devlin Report is: reduce them all to one common denominator.

However, the salary determined by the Minister, having consulted with the Minister for the Public Service, is not going to be high enough. I hate this sort of total uniformity. This is the sort of bureaucracy that will reduce effectiveness. We wipe out the legal base of the institute, the body corporate with the legal foundation, on which its independence was built. We have substituted for it an authority which has very little legal base. We have doubled the number of members on the council, the sure way to make it less effective. The next move is that the director's salary is to be fixed by the Minister having consulted with the Minister for the Public Service. The same uniform clause occurs in all these Bills as the semi-State area is drawn more and more into the civil service ambit. I am totally opposed to that.

We have points that are not just points between political parties. Senator Robinson and Senator Ferris have spoken from the other side of the House to show their disquiet about the spirit of what is being done here. This is very serious and I hope the Minister will be generous and not treat us as if we were talking with holes in the backs of our heads. I would take his commitment as absolutely genuine in that he is trying to improve the services and integrate them, but my theory is that we are doing it the wrong way.

Professor Quinlan

Senator Quinn made a very reasonable plea, in saying we are going round in circles with a Second Reading approach. What is needed and what I hope we can do is to sit down and tease out the individual sections and see where we can strengthen them. I accept the Minister's assurance of his desire that research and so on should be no less free than it has been. I hope the Minister will meet the amendments, especially the one on the deputy director, or perhaps he will show us that there is some other way of doing that. We would make better progress if we could concentrate on individual sections as they arise—and in doing that, I feel confident that we will have the sympathetic approach of the Minister—to ensure that what emerges is a unified structure that provides the proper advisory service and yet carries on the tradition of research and work that the Agricultural Institute has developed so well.

Mr. Killilea

I would like to make a point concerning what Senator Quinn and Senator Quinlan have said. I accept that the Minister means what he says when he tells the House that he will see personally that the institute will not be hampered or tampered with, but we might not be too far away from the time when we might have a different Minister for Agriculture. When they criticise us because we spend time trying to tease out this point of separation of the institute from the other two, they are trying to do your job, a Leas-Cheann Chomhairle, as well as to rush on to their own inconsequential points. This is a vital question. It is the most singular vital question in the entire Bill, because I have seen, and I am sure many Senators here have seen, the disintegration of individualism when the mammoth dog, as it were, stretches his claws. That is what is going to happen here. The Minister for Agriculture has seen this happen in other spheres. He knows that it is going to happen here, that they will get lost in the morass, that they will be doing the documentation and not the field work, and that they will not be doing the open-type educational work that they are now doing. I have given a clear answer why they will not do that; they will be afraid of the man in the shadow down under the tree. The Minister knows that. We have seen it in the Sugar Company; CIE is reeking with it. That is intellectual hypocrisy by so-called intellectuals. Those people who should be at drawing boards should stay at drawing boards and leave the agricultural situation to the agricultural people who are the most real people existing in this land.

Ruairí Quinn

Does that make the rest of us unreal?

Mr. Killilea

Ninety per cent of them. They quibble about everything but they know nothing.

Mr. E. Ryan

The Minister said a short time ago what the Bill was all about was to improve the services. We all agree with that. We all want to improve the service and, by and large, we all agree that the Minister wants to achieve that objective also. What this debate is about is whether or not the Minister is going about it the right way. The debate is about whether or not the method is the right one, whether or not control should be taken from those who have it—I am talking about the institute now—and given to those who seem to want it badly. There is a tendency to interfere with things that are doing well and not to interfere with things that are doing badly. Everybody agrees that the institute has done excellent work. The Minister has said so; everybody has said so. Here is an institute which has been in existence for many years, which everybody agrees has done good work, but the Department cannot leave it alone, and the Minister apparently cannot leave it alone. It must be interfered with. Why not leave the things that are working and do something with the things that are not working?

There has been no argument made in the course of this debate which proves that there should have been any interference with the institute. Its only sin seems to have been that it was independent. Its only sin, I will go so far as to say, is that it was doing too well and getting too much credit, credit that possibly the Department of Agriculture think they should have themselves. Why interfere with this particular institute? Nobody believes the Bill will improve it. The most they will say is that it will not do any harm. At best it will not be improved by this Bill; at worst it will be very much disimproved.

We have had cogent arguments which suggest that the institute will be undermined by the decrease in autonomy which it is going to suffer under this Bill. It is hard to understand, and in my view impossible to justify, interference with something which has done good work, which can and will do good work if it is left to carry on as it did in the past. It is not, in my belief, in the interests of agriculture in this country and in broad terms it is not in the interests of the country generally to interfere with a body which has committed no sin, except perhaps to be too good and to be a little more independent that it should be.

Over the years there has been a development of allowing certain spheres to be detached from the civil service and to be put under independent or semi-independent boards. In an article reviewing the development of this country since its independence, it was said that we followed slavishly what we got from the British in regard to our parliamentary and other institutions and that possibly the only single development we have taken up for ourselves was these semi-State bodies, such as the institute and others. It is our only contribution to the democratic structure of this country. Although it could not be said that all these institutions were successful, this is one which has been very successful.

An Foras Talúntais is not the only semi-independent body which has been set up. If one looks at Bord Bainne, would anybody believe that the Department could do that job? I think it is ludicrous to suggest for one moment that the Department could have been as successful as Bord Bainne have been in the past. I am not convinced that we will not have a Bill brought in to bring Bord Bainne back under the Department.

We have a tendency to interfere with what is good and ignore what is bad. To be fair to the Department of Agriculture and to the Minister, this is not confined to that Department; it is a tendency which has developed in many Departments. If this development of handing over certain functions to independent or semi-independent bodies was looked upon by the civil service over the years as an insidious revolution—and I think many civil servants would look on it in that way—it is true to say that the counter-revolution is now in full swing. I will give two examples. In the Department of Industry and Commerce the chairmanship of CTT is now in the hands of a civil servant and the chairmanship of the IDA is now in the hands of a retired civil servant.

This is a very serious and undesirable tendency which has been going on over the past few years. I have great admiration for civil servants, who are outstandingly able and dedicated people and who in their own sphere do an excellent job. The trouble is that they are not always as objective as they might be about what is and what should be their sphere. They unfortunately suffer from the mistaken belief that they can do everything better than anybody else and that anything they lose control of is likely to get into dangerous and incompetent hands.

It is not fair to blame the civil servants for this. This is a human, natural tendency and it is up to the Minister of each Department and the Government to curb this tendency and to keep it in balance. I am surprised the Minister has allowed this tendency to develop in his Department, because I think he is a competent Minister. I am surprised he has allowed himself to be talked into this situation of taking away the autonomy, the flair and the talent which this institute had. No matter what the Minister thinks and no matter what arguments are made, this is going to undermine the institute, but not in a dramatic way. It is not going to collapse, but in a few years' time it will not be as good an institute as it has been up to now. It is clear that the Bill will be passed and that talking about it is a lost cause, but it is our duty to say this. If I am right in thinking that the institute will not be successful in the future as it was in the past, at least people will be able to turn up records and say that we pointed out the dangers of doing what this Bill is doing.

I would like to invite those bureaucrats who suffer from illusions of infallibility to make hay while the sun shines because this trend of giving autonomy, independence, in certain spheres was a good trend. An attempt is being made to turn it back, to stage a counter-revolution. When Fianna Fáil get back to power that counter-revolution will be defeated and we will give autonomy and independence where it is appropriate to do so. I hope too much damage will not be done in the meantime.

Mr. Clinton

Question put.

The Committee divided: Tá, 24; Níl, 13.

Tá

Barrett, Jack.
Blennerhassett, John.
Boland, John.
Butler, Pierce.
Codd, Patrick.
Connolly, Roderic.
Daly, Jack.
Ferris, Michael.
Mannion, John M.
Markey, Bernard.
O'Brien, Andy.
O'Higgins, Michael J.
FitzGerald, Alexis.
FitzGerald, Jack.
Harte, John.
Horgan, John S.
Kerrigan, Patrick.
Lyons, Michael Dalgan.
McCartin, John Joseph.
McHugh, Vincent.
Prendergast, Micheál A.
Quinn, Ruairí.
Robinson, Mary.
Sanfey, James W.

Níl

Browne, Patrick (Fad).
Cowen, Bernard.
Eachthéirn, Cáit Uí.
Garrett, Jack.
Hanafin, Des.
Keegan, Seán.
Killilea, Mark.
Lenihan, Brian.
McGowan, Patrick.
Martin, Augustine.
Ryan, Eoin.
Ryan, William.
West, Timothy Trevor.

Tellers: Tá, Senators Sanfey and Harte; Níl, Senators W. Ryan and Garrett.

Question declared carried.

Section 8 agreed to.

SECTION 9.

Question proposed: "That section 9 stand part of the Bill."

Ruairí Quinn

I am concerned with the good name of An Foras Talúntais. Is it proposed that this name will totally disappear or is there any possibility that the name in the title should not in fact become a Gaelic name? Would the Minister like to comment on that? I accept the legal arguments and the reason he gave on the Second Stage, but certain members of the institute were concerned about the very cold-blooded way section 10 is worded—"The Institute is hereby dissolved".

Mr. Clinton

I can quite easily understand this sort of concern and loyalty to a name that has been in existence over a number of years but the same concern could arise in the case of the other services that have been integrated. I do not think you would get acceptance because they would simply say that they were all being brought in and dominated by one of the three agencies that have come together.

Ruairí Quinn

The actual structure as laid out in this Bill shows that that is not the case with regard to the service. We are talking about the title. I am concerned that we are losing the bilingual aspect in this regard. We are having an exclusively English name and there should be an Irish counterpart. I shudder to think what the precise Gaelic translation of this particular body might happen to be. I think An Foras Talúntais is a very acceptable title. Anybody who would argue that the other services are being gobbled up, because the Gaelic name of the body, in An Foras Talúntais could be refuted by the sort of arguments we have had already and that are going to continue throughout the rest of the day. I would implore the Minister to retain this name in some form.

Mr. Clinton

Would it not give the impression that the only thing in future that the institute was providing was a research service and not including education and advisory work? I do not think we could do this.

Dr. West

Could I back Senator Quinn here? What in the words "An Foras Talúntais" has anything to do with research? There is absolutely nothing in An Foras Talúntais, if my Gaelic is correct, that says anything about research, advisory services or education. It just says an agricultural institute. It seems to me a perfect title for incorporating all these and a number of other services, if the Minister likes to assign them to them.

Dr. Martin

I would like to associate myself with this. I am not sure that either Senator Quinn or Senator West has worked out the legal implications of what they are saying, because you might be caught in a legal situation where an antecedent body which held certain powers might be identified with the continuing Irish translation. That might make for absolute chaos, and nobody wants that.

What Senator Quinn said has highlighted what I have to insist, and reluctantly insist: that there is a certain brutality about the entire operation. An Foras Talúntais have a long record of splendid service. To have their functions appropriated by the civil service, their research directed, every move they make clocked in and clocked out, a situation where any researcher who had stayed up until 12 o'clock at night with a test tube might have to answer a question the next day if he turned up ten minutes late. "Ar mhiste leat a mhíniú cén fá go raibh tú déanach ar maidin?" That is bad enough. But there is a certain brutality in obliterating an institution as venerable, as effective and as well recognised and admirable in their performance as An Foras Talúntais to be replaced by something unpronounceable as NAAERA. There is a lack of delicacy about the whole operation. The point raised by Senator Quinn points to an extraordinarily imperial attitude on the part of the Minister and his Department towards this entire operation.

Mr. Lenihan

I am reading some wisdom from the Second Stage debate on the Agricultural Institute Bill, 1957. Under section 4 of the Bill there was no doubt that all areas of an agricultural institute could be embraced by what is called the activities and the functions of An Foras Talúntais. There can be nothing wider than that. It is really flying in the face of logic for the Minister to come in here and suggest that, because this is a Bill embracing advisory, education and research functions, it is adding to research by including advisory and education functions and that in some way this necessitates a change in the Title of the Bill. It does not. The Bill as originally drafted, setting up An Foras Talúntais, that is, the Agricultural Institute, was deliberately drafted with very wide terms of reference designed to bring in the whole area of agricultural activity including marketing.

Advice, research, education, marketing—this was the whole purpose of the exercise at that time. Indeed the Minister is aware that the IFA—or the NFA as they were at that time—in their White Paper of 1955 suggested just this: that the wider the terms of reference, the better. That was the main thinking behind having the Agricultural Institute established as a wide-ranging agricultural body. An Foras Talúntais as it was known officially, and which is now established over 20 years as an excellent institute with an excellent reputation. You do not throw a reputation of 20 years' work and 20 years' standing out the window just for the sake of establishing a new label that is meaningless in terms of the letter heading label, "NAAERA". That will mean nothing. We have spent 20 years' time, money, energy and buildup by an excellent team of a tremendously high reputation as the foremost international and world specialists in the whole area of agricultural research, education, investigation, marketing and so on. Having built up this goodwill and established this reputation, why throw it out at this stage?

An Foras Talúntais have become part of our national heritage as it were. Why change a name that is well established throughout the world for a meaningless, bureaucratic, letter heading? That is all we are doing here.

Mr. McCartin

I think we do less than justice to the staff of the Agricultural Institute when we make such an issue out of such a small matter. If we feel that by debating this issue in this narrow way, we can in some way evade the worries, or compensate the members of the Agricultural Institute for whatever grievance they may feel, we totally misrepresent them and underrate the name.

Dr. West

So they really have a grievance?

Mr. McCartin

This is the first time I have spoken on this. Yes, I think they probably have a grievance and I want to say it is because of my respect for the quality and the standard of the people who work in the Agricultural Institute that I think it shameful that we should think we can offer them this sort of assistance and expect them to be impressed by it— the name of the Agricultural Institute. Whatever way things were in the past, they will not be different in the future as a result of this Bill. I accept that there are some small disadvantages but on the other hand I think that the amount of good which can be achieved by this legislation will far outweigh, and will be seen to outweigh in the long run, the grievances or disadvantages that one section of the new authority may feel. We should remember of course, that when we talk about the Agricultural Institute we are talking about a very small proportion of the total number of people who are involved in the whole agricultural service, a very small proportion when you take advisory and development sections and the Department of Agriculture itself and the research arm. I would not dispute that the quality of the research has been outstanding and has a source of great pride for the agricultural industry in Ireland. Nevertheless, we are talking about a minority of the people employed in what was one complete operation. The position of the Agricultural Institute should not be seen in complete isolation from what the agricultural industry was nor in isolation from the services that were provided for the agricultural industry by the other sections, in development and advice and by the Department of Agriculture itself.

I think we should not make too much of an issue of this. The indelicacy, the brutality is, I think, purely imaginary. The abolition of the Agricultural Institute may be necessary from the point of view of drawing up clear, concise legislation to which people can refer in the future. That is important. But, on the other hand, when I telephone Moorepark or Oak Park or go to some of the conferences they organise to get out their information, I do not expect that I will find that the Agricultural Institute has vanished from the face of the earth or that the legislation has made them less effective. I expect this legislation will give them added powers and increased opportunities to do the job they were set up to do. We should not condemn the name of the new authority which gives a fair representation to the various sections that will participate in the job in the future: it is rather small to do so. There are other things that we could discuss to greater advantage.

Mr. Killilea

I like the way Senator McCartin slips down the slippery slope. We are not creating the situation; it is the Minister who is creating the situation by putting this name on it. In so doing he is confining the operation, whereas, as Senator Lenihan said, prior to that An Foras Talúntais was a broadly-based organisation. It implied education, research and a whole range of other things. Now, as the National Agricultural Advisory, Education and Research Authority, we shall be confined. It cannot be any more and, obviously, it will not be any less. Senator McCartin, in his argument for this name, says we belittle the institute by our argument. We did not put this name on it. It was the Minister or the civil service that did it. It was not us. We are protesting against it and there is logic in our protest.

There is no way, despite what Senator McCartin may think, by which in time the Agricultural Institute will be the same as it was in the past. I can assure him here and now that in six months' time, after this board is set up, it will not be the same and it never will be the same again. The Minister knows that, too. History proves this. Senator Ryan on the previous section went through a whole range of cases and all were drastic. This is another one. What we are telling Senator McCartin and those people who think that way is that we oppose this business. We believe it is cruel and crude, to say the least of it, because it does not give us anything new. It confines us to four single activities. An Foras Talúntais had a broad base and could have branched into other agricultural activities.

Dr. West

Read the section of the Act.

Mr. Killilea

Do not mind reading sections of the Act. Go down and live among the farming community. That is the best education you can get. I saw plants done on heifers recently and not alone was it done by An Foras Talúntais, but they went about to their neighbours and, if they wanted help, they got it. Is that included in this sort of rubbish? They will be confined to the letter of the law. The more I see of this Bill, the tighter I can see the grip growing of the men at the top of the civil service and of the Minister, seeing that he has taken responsibility for it. It will be a vicious circle with no escape from it. An Foras Talúntais did give a service to the community apart from the employment part of it. I have seen it about me. Recently I even saw it in regard to electric fencing. The institute have two-thirds of the parish in which I live. We are told it will not change. It certainly will because no member of that institute in future will dare under this board planted by the Minister, to move one inch outside his own area. It might not be done under the Minister's eyes but in case it would come before the Minister's eyes, it will be nipped in the bud. You can write all the epitaphs you like on An Foras Tálúntais but until they are given back their freedom with their proper title and are allowed to continue in the way they have done in the educational and scientific areas and to improve and increase their services, they will not function at their best. We should not begrudgingly say that they got £5.6 million last year: that is not the point; if they needed £45.6 million they could get it because they have always given a good service.

Professor Quinlan

In this section we are concerned with the name; the functions will be specified by the Act. The name suggested sticks in my throat —NAAERA. What the devil will we call that? Unfortunately, it is becoming very prevalent to be known by initials like the HEA, the NCA and all the rest. It is a type of Americanisation or computerisation of naming. I do not think this is right. I much prefer some type of a decent, Irish-sounding name for those bodies. We should show more initiative and imagination than is involved in capital letters. Apart altogether from functions or anything else, surely we are not going to baptise the new board with this appalling absurdity—the NAAERA. At least, the HEA has only three letters even though it still does not stand for much; neither does NCEA which is four letters. But now we have run to six letters. It is all wrong. I do not see that there is any necessity for a change. The function can be changed and that is what matters, what the Bill accomplishes. Surely, An Foras Talúntais is well known. It is a nice Irish, Gaelic-sounding title. How shall we translate this? I am not a Gaelic scholar and I will not make an effort to translate it.

Let me read the relevant section. People said the institute could not do this. Section 4 of the 1958 Act, which set up An Foras Talúntais, in paragraph (d), listing the functions of the institute, states that the institute may do any of the following:

(d) consult with and advise persons engaged in carrying out agricultural research in relation to their programmes of agricultural research,

(h) provide and organise courses of study for advanced students in agricultural research and related subjects,

(i) provide and organise seminars, conferences, lectures and demonstrations in agricultural research and related subjects and on specific problems and programmes in relation thereto,

(j) disseminate, or procure the dissemination of, the results of agricultural research to interested persons, including, in particular, persons engaged in providing advisory services in relation to agriculture...

So, those subsections of section 4 of the 1958 Act seem to indicate quite clearly that An Foras Talúntais could take on the advisory part and the whole lot without changing anything, with a much simpler Act and without half the discussion or nonsence that is going on.

Mr. McCartin

To hear this sort of argument put forward brings home to me how far removed people are from what actually happens. I do not recall exactly when An Foras Talúntais was set up but I know the advisory service was not as widely available to the farmers at that time as it is now. The truth of this situation is that in the past ten or 15 years there was a very comprehensive advisory service available to farmers. These people had their own field of activities and were quite jealous of their own area of operation. For anybody to suggest that it has been in practice possible for the Agricultural Institute to come out into the fields and give direct advice to the farmers is an indication to me of how little is understood of what the actual position was.

Mr. Killilea

That is not true.

Mr. McCartin

Nobody has more practical experience of getting the results of research from the Agricultural Institute than I have. Nobody has a longer history of working closely with the advisory service than I have. I know exactly how information from the Agricultural Institute was made available to farmers and what were the normal channels and what were the channels that one had to be very quiet about.

Mr. E. Ryan

I would like to get back to the question of a name for a moment. I acknowledge that it is a relatively unimportant thing, certainly unimportant compared with some other aspects of this Bill. Nevertheless, as we are obviously not going to make great improvements in other sectors, perhaps we could save something. It is of some importance. Those who believe that the institute created a good reputation for itself and did good work feel that the name is the only thing most people, outside the country recognise and remember. The name is what they know about and it is of some importance.

Perhaps again it is the difference between the bureaucratic mind and the non-bureaucratic mind. In most other services, most commercial bodies, most academic bodies, a name is important particularly where something has gone on for a considerable length of time, where something has built up a reputation and that reputation is typified in the name. It is something that is not easily cast aside. It is something which should be maintained. Sometimes it is worth hundreds of thousands of pounds to have that name. Yet, not only are we, as many of us think, throwing away many of the tangible and real advantages and attributes of this institute but we are really throwing away the name as well.

It seems to me that if An Foras Talúntais has been in touch with various research bodies, bodies similar to itself all over the world, and in future if they write, if they have papers, if they put forward suggestions and so on under this new name, it will not be realised that it is the same body. It will certainly not get the same respect, the same consideration as it would under the name that has been built up over the years. To a certain extent, perhaps not to the same extent, the same applies in this country in the case of people who are looking for advice and so on. Therefore, although I acknowledge that it is not all important—the Leader of the House says we should not be wasting time on it: I am sure the Leader of the House has a long list of Bills which we should be devoting ourselves to and perhaps we should get on with this as soon as possible—it is of some importance, it should not be overlooked and I can only think that the only justification for changing the name seems possible an excess of honesty and integrity on the part of those who drafted this Bill, who acknowledge that it is not going to be the same institute and that it would be wrong to allow it to retain the name

Ruairí Quinn

Since I raised the question I do not think it is necessary to mention again the whole range of functions of the board of the authority. But I am speaking again for three reasons. First, what is the girl on the switch going to say every time she answers the telephone? How is she going to announce the new boss? I happen to be a partner in a firm of architects and our title is virtually unusable because there are so many names in it. It may sound very trite, but in fact it becomes a problem. Some recognition in whatever form is found suitable should be given to this. It is going to be the "Ag" Board something or other. It will certainly not be what is here. NAAERA, depending on the regional pronunciation we have of it, will create problems. It may appear to be silly, but since it is in a section of this Bill I am addressing myself to it.

Secondly, it is an institute of research we are taking into a new body. It has a tradition of research which, as Senator Eoin Ryan has pointed out, has an international facet; and I should like to see some kind of continuity maintained between the two. Finally, An Foras Talúntais is registered with a number of development agencies, such as the EEC, for work abroad; and presumably there is some kind of continuity in this regard. It is for those reasons I would like to see some acceptable form of Gaelic name which would encompass these things and which would be purely a name. I discount the argument about functions we have had on this section because they are not relevant. We are talking about a name for this new authority.

Mr. McGowan

I think it is rather strange that the Leader of the House should say we are wasting our time discussing this. It only indicates to me that there is a certain line of thought here, that this thing will be bulldozed through at all costs. If we take it that this is a new Bill to help the agricultural industry, we start off with the very name of the Bill, which I think is as clumsy as the intentions that are in it. The man in the street, the farmer, and those who are involved in a practical way in agriculture can actually make an assessment of the Bill by one glance at the name. The name never came from anybody involved in agriculture. It came from the bureaucracy, people who are far removed from agriculture. You can do a lot with a pen and a bit of paper, but when you get out on the ground it is a different job. If the Minister wants to have this new Bill as an instrument for the Department and for the whole of the agricultural community to believe in, then he should start off on the right foot. I see it as a clumsy Bill right through from its title to its contents. I think it is totally unacceptable to the agricultural community. The name is unworthy of a new Bill for agriculture today.

Mr. Clinton

I just want to say that we are obviously looking for trouble if we select the name of one of the three agencies that are coming together. The other two agencies have been in existence since 1900 or so. This one came into existence in 1958. I have no objection to An Foras Talúntais as a name but it is clearly synonymous with research. It is known in the country as nothing else but the research institute. It would be giving a completely wrong impression if we were to call the new organisation An Foras Talúntais. It is a nice name, of course; I appreciate this. Senator Quinn asked "What will the lady on the switch say?" She could say "This is Miss Quinn, how can I help you? I am anxious to help you because we have a comprehensive service here".

Mr. Killilea

Could you simply call it "The Agricultural Institute" or "The Agricultural Commission"? This is a ridiculous name. If you were addressing a letter to them you would have to get a longer envelope.

Professor Quinlan

Could I appeal to the Minister to try to meet the genuine wishes that have been expressed to get a better name than the clumsy one that is here. I would suggest it would be better by far to continue the name we have as a tribute to the work that has been done but more especially as a tribute to the benefactors who established the institute. Without the far sighted statesmanship that made those funds available we would not be in our present position today. Even if it were considered necessary to change the name—and I do not think it is—the words that occur to me are, perhaps, An Bord Talúntais, although it has not continuity. Or perhaps An Foras Ginearálta Talúntais, if you feel that the other services would be a bit worried about the particular name. Again, I think they could be contacted between now and the Report Stage and told that there is a genuine wish in Seanad Éireann between all parties here to get a better name.

I think if Seanad Éireann could achieve that much it would have done something. We are proud of the name. We like to have Irish names rather than combinations of capital letters and especially this awful combination. Perhaps the Minister would take that as a genuine appeal. I think all parties and all the Independents as well agree on this. We will probably get a consensus. Senator Quinn and other speakers have made very valid points about what we would like to do in this regard. I ask the Minister to meet the Seanad on this point between this and the Report Stage.

Mr. Killilea

A Leas-Chathaoirleach, can the Senators actually make a proposal on that issue?

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

An amendment may not be put down at this stage.

Mr. Clinton

I can think about it but I do not see it being changed without a lot of trouble.

Question put and agreed to.

SECTION 10.

Question proposed: "That section 10 stand part of the Bill."

Dr. West

The Minister made it clear earlier this afternoon that he takes full responsibility for the Bill and for all its contents. We have been trying to get him to achieve this very desirable object in a different way from the way in which it is set out in the Bill. We have made a number of suggestions, all of which he has turned down. He says that on Report Stage he may consider a different name but indicates that it is unlikely.

We have gone through these arguments in considerable detail and I certainly would not be here still if I did not believe exactly what I was saying, even if at some times we are getting a bit exasperated by the Minister's attitude of not an inch, an attitude associated with the famous politicians in another part of the country. Perhaps he is getting exasperated by our attitude but I want to move to another point on which I think this Bill falls. I do not think we can pass section 10 without abrogating the treaty signed between the United States and Ireland in 1958 which set up the institute. This has been referred to on a number of occasions. Both Senators Quinlan and Lenihan took part in the debate which established the institute and they referred to the fact that the money which established the institute was a sum of around £1,800,000 and it was a counterpart of the Marshall Aid Fund which came to us in the fifties. This is brought out very explicitly in the discussions that went on about the establishment of the institute if one reads the speech of the Taoiseach of the day in Seanad Éireann in 1958. Mr. de Valera in his introductory remarks outlined the long and protracted negotiations that had gone on between the United States and the Republic. This resulted in a treaty which was agreed to by the two Houses of the Oireachtas and passed by a special motion in the Congress of the United States of America. I will quote from the treaty which set up the institute because I think we are breaking this treaty by passing section 10 of this Bill.

It is headed: Treaty Series, 1958, No. 7. Agreement between Ireland and the United States of America (subsidiary to the Agreement of 17 June, 1954), respecting the use of Counterpart for the Establishment of an Agricultural Institute. It is dated 16th April, 1958. I will quote the sections that I think are the vital ones. The Governments of Ireland and the United States of America have agreed as follows:

ARTICLE I.

The Irish Government undertake to establish an Agricultural Institute to be known as An Foras Talúntais, and to place at the disposal of the Institute £1,840,000 (one million, eight hundred and forty thousand pounds) from the balance in the Counterpart Special Account. This money shall be utilised by the Institute in the manner specified in paragraphs 4 and 5 of the Annex to this Agreement. The functions, government and other regulations relating to the finances and administration of the Institute shall also be set out in the Annex.

ARTICLE 11.

The Irish Government undertake, in pursuance of Article IV of the Principal Agreement, to furnish to the American Government as soon as possible after 31st March, 1959, a report on the progress of the project referred to in Article I and to furnish similar reports as soon as possible after 31st March in each subsequent year. Each such report shall be accompanied by a copy of the annual report of the Institute referred to in paragraph 13 of the Annex to this Agreement.

There are a couple of other articles which I will not quote but in the annex to the agreement the functions of the institute are clearly set out and these were incorporated in the 1958 Act. They can be read in the 1958 Act. Section 2 of the Annex to this treaty states:

GOVERNMENT OF THE INSTITUTE

(i) The Institute shall be a body corporate and shall be governed by a Council.

(ii) The Council shall consist of a Chairman and 12 ordinary members. The Chairman shall be appointed by the President of Ireland.

The rest of that section deals with the establishment of the Institute.

Section 5 of the annex states:

ENDOWMENT FUND.

(i) The Irish Government shall place at the disposal of the Institute the sum of £1,000,000 out of the monies held in the Counterpart Special Account which sum shall be placed by the Institute to an endowment fund, to be called the Endowment Fund of An Foras Talúntais, and invested by the Institute in such securities as may be approved from time to time by the Minister for Finance of Ireland.

(ii) The interest on the Endowment Fund shall accrue to the Institute as annual income.

So a sum of £840,000 was granted by the United States in Marshall Aid for the initial capital expenditure to set up the institute and then a fund of £1 million was given by the United States Government which was to be invested and the income was to provide the annual income to run the institute.

The Bill before us simply abrogates that treaty. This raises a number of difficult legal questions. If this is in fact the case, if there have been no amending treaties, then it seems clear that this Bill is doing something very serious indeed. As the Government have stated—in particular the Minister for Foreign Affairs has said this on a number of occasions—that for small States international agreements must be interpreted in good faith as our protection against great power machinations.

This is the principle on which our foreign affairs have been conducted for many years. It is different from the principle which adheres to legal agreements internally, where the letter of the law is interpreted. It is clear that to protect ourselves in international agreements we have to interpret the spirit of these agreements as well as the letter. It is the spirit of the agreement which counts.

Anybody who knows anything about the United States knows that that is a country in which bodies such as the Agricultural Research Institute are distanced as far as possible from departmental bureaucracy, probably further than in any other country. They are very particular about distancing their institutions from the central bureaucracy. There is a continuing debate in the United States about the encroachment of bureaucracy. So not only in the letter but in the spirit are we abrogating the agreement that was signed in 1958 between Ireland and the United States. This is very serious. It has very serious ramifications. I should like to know if the United States Government are aware of what the Minister intends to do in this Bill and, if so, what their reaction has been.

It seems strange, and not a little sinister, that the Agricultural Institute was founded by means of a treaty between Ireland and the United States and that this is the first time in the two debates that this has been mentioned. That is very strange. I think there is something funny going on. The institute was founded by an international treaty between two sovereign countries and if I had not fortuitously discovered this during the Second Stage debate no reference would ever have been made to it. Surely the Minister should have referred to this in his speeches.

It also raises an internal question of our own domestic law. The institute was established by a treaty as a body corporate. The body corporate is the crucial thing. This meant that it had its own legal status, which is totally different from the limited legal status of an authority. A body corporate has all sorts of legal rights and it can undertake all sorts of legal obligations in legal contracts, which an authority cannot do. This is the point we have been trying to make.

It could be that the employees of the institute would be in a position, in view of this treaty, if this Bill is passed, to take an action. I am not sure what the actual legal term would be under which the action would be taken but in the case of private citizens it would be a breach of trust action. In the case of a private citizen it would be a case of winding up a trust—we are winding up an institute here. There certainly would be a case for taking a breach of trust action. I do not know what the corresponding legal name is here. There could be a prima facie case that the employees of the institute are in a similar legal position to the beneficiaries of a trust. If a trust is wound up then one can take a breach of trust action. It could be that because of this treaty, which as far as I know has not been mentioned, the employees of the institute might be in a position to take an action against the Minister on these grounds.

There are two points here. There is the important point of international law if we do not adhere to the terms of the treaty set out in 1958, which this Bill does not; it clearly breaks them. Then there is the point of our own internal law concerning the establishment of this institute and the position of the employees in view of the treaty signed between the United States and Ireland.

Mr. Clinton

Perhaps I could help Senator West. He says there has been no mention of this. It is mentioned in the explanatory memorandum and in section 54. Earlier Senator West expressed his admiration for the officials in Government Departments. Having expressed that admiration he should accept that they were not foolish enough to go ahead and run point blank into such serious legal trouble without first seeking and getting the agreement of the American Government for the changes proposed in this Bill. They have done that. As I say, it is explained both in the explanatory memorandum and again in section 54. In the explanatory memorandum it states that section 54 provides for the treatment of any unexpended balances in the capital and endowment funds of An Foras Talúntais in accordance with an agreement recently reached between the Government and the United States authorities. Again it is a misunderstanding and a failure to read what has been circulated to Members of the Seanad and Dáil.

Relating to another matter that has been raised twice or three times, it has been stated that this is not a body corporate. Of course, it is a body corporate. It is set out in the First Schedule that the authority shall be a body corporate with perpetual succession and so on. So there were two misreadings there.

Mr. McGowan

I listened to the Minister stating that it was necessary, legally, to dissolve the institute. I think this is a big mistake because the Agricultural Institute was a by-word with the farmers, who would not be very familiar with the language of the parliamentary draftsman. Only time will prove the retrograde step that has been taken here by abolishing the institute.

The provisions of the Bill do nothing to encourage the farming community. I believe it has been a step backward. No matter what the Minister says, the farming community will not be convinced that any fresh thinking has gone into this. We have an institute whose work has been praised. It does not become more efficient by broadening the scope and changing its name or taking it in as part of a broader board. In my opinion it makes it much less efficient. The Agricultural Institute was well known, well established and it provided a service with which the agricultural industry found it very easy to communicate. The consequences of abolishing the institute will be seen in the short term.

I have my doubts about the new board because it is very hard to see the additional benefits. I do not see any assurance given by the Minister. He wants to broaden the scope of the advisory service and to involve the rural community. I do not think it does that. It contracts, restricts and prevents. It is like the high-powered architect who draws up plans without serious consultation with those who are going to perform on the ground. This is the trend here. The damage this will do will be felt because it will not create any confidence whatever within the industry. The expressions of fear are there already. Those who are engaged in agriculture do not know what the board's intentions are. They know that the Minister is adding duties and functions to the agricultural advisory service and there is no practical use or benefit accruing from that. We should restore the confidence of those engaged in agriculture.

New legislation should be drafted with the greatest possible simplicity. We should be getting away from the day when the ordinary people have to look up a subsection and relate one Bill to another before they know what benefits or disadvantages are in the Bill. All of the functions and benefits provided by the Agricultural Institute are provided for in this Bill. To me, this all adds up to a recipe for complication, and it does not inspire any confidence among the farming community.

Mr. Ferris

The wording used in section 10 is, to say the least, ruthless: "The Institute is hereby dissolved." The Minister has made reference to this in previous discussions on the Bill in this House and I gather he has taken legal opinion on it. I understand the Minister's commitment to the continuation of the institute and its research. As I read it, that means that it is the legislation that set up the institute which is dissolved, not the institute itself. The institute remains intact, and the Minister has given a commitment that it will be maintained to the same degree as in the past.

Surely, the parliamentary draftsman could think of a better way of doing this. The section could state "The legislation setting up the institute is hereby rescinded" or "The powers vested in the institute are hereby transferred to this new board". Would that not have a more desirable effect on the staff of the institute? I would ask for the Minister's comments on this. I know that he has legal opinion available to him that we have not. We are looking at the practical side of it. We know that the institute is not hereby dissolved. As Senator McCartin says, he will contact them next week and expect them to be there, functioning as efficiently as always. There must be some other terminology that can be used instead of saying "The Institute is hereby dissolved".

Mr. McCartin

I am less concerned with the actual wording of the legislation than with the effects of it. If the effects of the present situation were all that the agricultural industry might have expected, if the progress in agriculture was all that the Irish people expected from the industry, I do not think there would be any need to change the legislation. But more could have been made of our resources in the past. More could have been made of the money that was spent in all the services which cater for agriculture. Therefore it is time somebody took action. Successive Ministers studied this problem, got reports, got opinions and looked at it all and were afraid to do anything. The present Minister has made up his mind, in a situation where there was bound to be dissatisfaction among some element. I believe he has produced the best package and proposed legislation which, I believe, will have the right effect. I have found the institute to be one of the most efficient bodies, employing a most dedicated group of people. Their freedom of movement and ability to follow their own conscience and judgment was most refreshing. In the future, rather than see this aspect of the Agricultural Institute diminish, I would hope to see them pass on some of these advantages and some of their dedication to the other bodies with whom they will become involved.

When the Agricultural Institute was first set up the advisory service was much weaker than it is at the present time. As the years went on certain tensions did develop between the research people and the other services which were longer in existence. While it did not do a great deal of damage in the past, the best interests of Irish agriculture would not be served by allowing the situation to continue.

The work of the Agricultural Institute did not come directly down and give its benefits to farmers as it should have given. I believe that this was in the minds of both the civil servants and the Minister when they drafted the legislation. I know that the findings of research carried out by the Agricultural Institute have been implemented in other states and not here. There was certain lack of communication in some ways and certain tensions that might have been unjustifiable. Nevertheless, the working of the bodies concerned, the development and research can be better served under the umbrella or a new authority in which the best example of the Agricultural Institute together with their research and the result of their work will be passed on to development and advice, and that, rather than losing a precious commodity which we had in the Agricultural Institute, we will improve the good sense and the dedication of the people in the Agricultural Institute. We will have the sort of co-operation that we have come to expect from them in the past and the elements that were missing for progress in agriculture.

People looking into the future forecast increased production in agriculture by 5 or 6 per cent. Other people say this is not realistic, it is too much. I confidently believe that Irish agriculture is capable of expanding at the rate of 7 to 10 per cent annually, given the market. We have the prices, and given the leadership and the encouragement together with the advice, development and research that this new body can give, I think we will have an accelerated expansion in the agricultural industry. The problems of the research people have not been fully understood in the debates in this House. There has been a tendency to fish in troubled waters rather than to analyse what exactly was the history of the worries and concerns that a number of people in the Agricultural Institute have, and I feel they have some. There was a very belated, very hasty search for information to try to uncover some argument that might seem plausible but I think that we have an obligation to be more constructive with regard to an industry which is so important.

Dr. Martin

I listened with great interest to what Senator McCartin has just said, and, indeed, there are very few people in the country as qualified as he to talk about matters like this because of very great experience in both the industrial and the agricultural areas. However, I do not think he has absolutely demolished the case, a case which I do not think is the result of lobbying, though there has been lobbying. Primarily I do not think it is that at all. I felt through this House today on both sides of the floor a certain sense of compunction about the, let us say, perfunctory way—I will not use words I used before; I will not use Senator Ferris's word "ruthless" in which an institution of such strength and force and obvious value can be snuffed out. We are discussing section 10, which reads:

The Institute is hereby dissolved. The summary of that is "dissolution of the institute". That is what we are talking about. That is a rather ruthless formulation. Senator Ferris found it so even though he is not primarily opposed to the Act itself. He thinks the formulation itself is anything but adroit. I think it is extremely maladroit, but I cut a little further beneath that. We have a lot of institutions in the country, semi-State bodies, bodies corporate, and they think they are doing a good job. Very many of them are and the energy, enthusiasm and dedication which makes these institutions do a good job is the sense that people repose their trust in them and that the Government do too. I think they have reasonable hope to go on with their work and expand it and pour their enthusiasm and work into it, as long as they know they are doing a good job and as long as that is granted to them.

If, however, they are unfaithful in their stewardship, of course, they will be brought to book and they should be, to quote this, "hereby dissolved"— the operation summed up in "dissolution of the institute" or whatever it is. But that is not the case here. There is no question of incompetence or bad stewardship. Instead the argument is in favour of what Senator McCartin I think has eloquently enough said: greater efficiency in the discharge of their duties.

There are a lot of institutions analogous to this one and I am not sure that rather perfunctory formula is going to engender a great deal of trust in the people working there, and I am not sure that, in fact, it will not undermine the sense of their future. In other words, they say, if the institute can be so easily dismissed from its office, what is the use of enthusiasm, energy, working beyond your hours, pushing out the frontiers of your achievement. That is the first thing. The second thing is this, and it is the one that keeps recurring. We are a mixture, I suppose, of a State-aided and free enterprise economy.

There are semi-State bodies. State bodies, and then totally private bodies. It has been recognised by us as being a reasonably good mix, not a perfect mix, but speaking for myself I find, if I might put it without being toffee-nosed or snooty or elitïst the energy that goes into such a body as the institute is intellectual energy. By and large the people who are working there are concerned with the pursuit of knowledge and very often they are willing to do that for very little money. Very often they do it well beyond the call of duty. They are very touchy people. If they are going to be asked why they did not turn up at nine o'clock in the morning, when in fact they may have been working until 12 o'clock the previous night, if you start doing that with them, I think you can kill the very source of their dedication, energy and their intellectual work.

Therefore it would seem to me that, this is a real problem for the Minister. Obviously a Minister wants to get things done and if he is in the position that this Minister is in, that he has to spend a lot of his time in Brussels arguing cases, he really has not much time for the more cumbersome processes of democracy and so forth back at home here. It is better to get everybody under the same whip and make them dance to his tune—all in the interest of the common good of course, no sense of autocracy involved. I can understand the impatience of somebody who has so much on his plate and who finds three bodies here not quite working in the triple harness that he would like, not stepping it out, so to speak, together with the élan and obedience he would wish for.

However, there are two ways of solving that. One of them would be the one he has chosen: that would be, bring them right under my thumb and then we can make them really toe the line. But there was the other way, and looking at those cold words "the institute is hereby dissolved". I wonder why could it not have been the other way. Why not separate the national agricultural advisory element, then the education, and again the research, and create an over-arching authority based on the three of them, growing from below instead of above with adequate Government appointment and so forth, and let them go their way? These processes of advice and education and research mean they are partners and they could very well work under that kind of partnership. That cold and pitiless formulation there—"The institute is hereby dissolved" will be a kind of death knell to dedication in a lot of bodies corporate and semi-State institutions, if they think that their tenure of life is so easily at the will of Ministers.

Furthermore, it is a pity that the dissolution of that institute should involve the increasing bureaucratisation of what should be a very outdoor, a very much on-the-ground industry, which is an industry that probably exhibits individuality more than any other industry under the sun—a farmer with a piece of land, working it. It is sad to see it so irrevocably and implacably under the bureaucratic or the civil servants or the administrative—I have nothing against them; some of my best friends are civil servants and bureaucrats and——

Dr. West

The Senator might be one himself yet if they get hold of the universities.

Ruairí Quinn

The Senator will be described as a dangerous devil if he continues on that.

Dr. Martin

That will be the day. It seems to me a pity that the one industry that is left which depends on sturdy individualism should be one that is now almost totally at the mercy of men sitting in offices, drawing lines, making decisions to cut back on this or that. Has that researcher turned up on time? Where is he? He is down the country. He has spent too much time talking to that farmer; he should be back at home. Senator West, with his immense experience of academic life. as I have, truly says that is going to drive a lot of good men to drink.

Mrs. Robinson

I share the concern expressed by a number of Senators who faced with this bald section which would propose to dissolve the institute. An Foras Talúntais. It clearly is agreed on all sides of the House and agreed by the Minister that the institute has been a very successful body, that it has provided independent and important research in the area of agriculture, that the staff are of a very high calibre and are very dedicated people. If the Minister puts forward a persuasive case for integrating the agricultural services, education, advice and research, surely it should have been possible to combine them without reaching the situation where, in a rather unusual way, concern is expressed on all sides of the House about what is being done.

I would like to come back to the point I was making earlier. The proposals in the White Paper were more acceptable than the terms of this Bill in so far as they effect the transfer of the research area from An Foras Talúntais to this new overall authority. It would be possible, even at this stage, to write into the statute itself the sort of safeguards which would remove a lot of the fears and apprehensions which are shared by Senators on both sides of the House. A number of these relate to the question of ensuring that there is within the global budget of the new authority to be established a definite commitment to a research budget, that there is a top level official, a deputy director, in charge of research and also—we will come to these points later—that there are better provisions relating to industrial relations within the authority. These are specific improvements which would remove a lot of the real disquiet which is felt by Senators. This disquiet has not been helped by the approach which the Minister appears to have adopted towards the people who are going to be very dramatically affected by this section, those who work in the Agricultural Institute and who see it being dissolved and who see themselves being transferred into another and different body so that we will have an integrated approach to agricultural advisory, educational and research services.

Reference has already been made on Second Stage to the fact that the vast majority of researchers in the institute were finally reduced to paying for very substantial advertisements in our daily newspapers in an attempt to communicate with the Minister. I do not want to go into that again—I think it has been sufficiently raised—but researchers are concerned about their own independence, and by that one does not mean total autonomy and total remoteness from any situation and the right to do anything you like with the taxpayers' money. That is not what is at issue, but independence so that research into areas such as land development, taxation of farmers, rather politically sensitive areas, can be embarked upon without interference or curtailment by bureaucracy or by ministerial interference.

If there is concern about that and if there appears to be an unwillingness to meet the people affected and to discuss these very serious issues with them and to hear their representations and to take time on it, so that they are reduced in the end to putting an advertisement in the paper, this can only accentuate these fears; this can only appear to give substance to the apprehensions which have been voiced by a number of Senators today. I know that the Minister has already given assurances. He may say to me that I was not here on Second Stage when he gave these assurances. Unfortunately I was attending a meeting of the Joint Committee which was taking place at the same time or I would have been here. I read his Second Stage speech and I know the type of personal forceful assurances he gave.

Nevertheless, this is not an adequate response because personal assurances by a Minister for the time being, however sincere—and I have absolutely no doubt that they are sincere in the case of the Minister—are not a substitute for ensuring that the statute itself, that the letter of the law, guarantees for all time that there will be the safeguards which are desirable and which would continue the same environment for research, the same protection for those engaged in it and the same sense of respect, and an assurance that they will be able to carry out their work as they have under the present working of the institute.

The Minister has referred to the terms of the 1958 Act and has said there is not really all that much difference. The money has to be voted, has to be agreed by the Minister. There is no independent source of funds. Why are we pointing to the independence of the institute and contrasting it with the system that will be established here? There is a very substantial difference The institute was a separate body devoted to research. Yet it had to make a case for a budget each year, make a case for funds, and the case depended on the willingness of the Minister of the day to provide funding. That is certainly true, but it also appeared as a specific item which one could look at, the amount that was going for research.

When this question was raised by me earlier the Minister drew my attention to section 44 of the Bill on the question of the board preparing for each financial year an estimate and the form that this may take. Then he referred me to subsection (4) which provides that the Minister, in conveying his approval, should indicate such if any amendments of the estimate that he considers necessary. I think the Minister's point was—he can correct me if I misunderstood him—that he could at that stage insist that there be separate budgeting for the advisory services, for the education services and for the research services in the estimates put up to him, that if it was not clear how the particular categories were to be delineated, he could send it back for amendment and could make this clear.

That would be some help in the matter. It would be better still if the Minister could both give a specific undertaking and perhaps amend section 44 to reflect that undertaking that there would be a budget broken down into special compartments and that this would be published in the Estimates of the Department so that it wou'd be clear not only to the Minister himself in deciding to approve the budget of the board but clear to members of the Dáil in looking at the Agriculture Estimates how much of that global budget was definitely earmarked for research. That would certainly help to create more confidence among the researchers, because we deal always with human beings.

When a body like the institute has built up its own spirit, its own goodwill, has carved out for itself a role which is acknowledged on all sides of the House today, has created its environment for independent research and is making its contribution, we must be very slow to abolish it because we want to do something else, and risk losing the very substantial values and quality of the work of the institute and of people involved there. I would ask the Minister to take very seriously the sort of representations that have been made. I would like to make it clear, as I think Senator Martin said, we are not speaking as people who have been very successfully lobbied by a few people who have a vested interest. If there had been no representations made, we would make the same points of concern about the fact that there are not adequate safeguards in the present text of the Bill to ensure that the best features of An Foras Talúntais and of the people who work there are carried on in the research work which they will be required to do and will want to do under the new board.

I am setting up the board in exactly the way Fianna Fáil set up the board of An Foras Talúntais, every step of the road, so do not start reflecting on me. This is nothing new.

Mr. Lenihan

The Minister is controlling finances, too.

Mr. Killilea

There are 12 more on this board.

Mr. Clinton

Exactly.

Mr. Killilea

Why change it?

Mr. Clinton

I agree with the point raised by Senator West. As far as the employees are concerned, the position with regard to possible legal action is very serious. We are talking here about a solemn agreement between Ireland and the United States of America which was presented to Dáil Éireann by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, dated 17th June, 1954, and ratifications exchanged in Washington on 17th February, 1955. The agreements governs the disposition of the ballot. The counterpart special account was to be used by the Irish Government for the purpose of establishing an agricultural institute to improve and develop the agricultural production and marketing potential of land. It said that the Irish Government will carry out the projects and programmes contemplated in the agreement and that the agreement provided for the establishment of an independent institute.

The onus on the Irish Government under this agreement, in exchange for the money given to them by the American Government, was to set up an institute, not an agricultural institute as part of the Department of Agriculture. That solemn agreement laid before the Dáil became effective on 17th February, 1955, and was signed on behalf of the Government of Ireland by Liam Cosgrave and on behalf of the Government of the United States by Michael William Howard Taft III. That agreement is still international law and is a solemn treaty between our two countries.

It is not good enough for the Minister to come to this House and say that, as mentioned in the explanatory memorandum, which has no legal significance, section 54 does not in any way interfere with the solemn agreement to which I referred. That section deals with the transfer of moneys accruing to the authority and no more than that. There is no mention in this Bill, good, bad or indifferent, of the solemn agreement between Ireland and the United States of America which became effective in 1954 and on the basis of which a subsequent honourable Government decided to implement the Agricultural Institute Act, 1958— an Act which, in effect, implements this agreement between Ireland and the United States of America—which set up an agricultural institute in consideration of the granting by the American Government of special funds under the counterpart special account.

There you have the flow of events, the signing of the agreement by the second inter-Party Government between Ireland and the United States of America, its implementation in the form of legislation by the Fianna Fáil Government in 1957, supported by the then leader of the Fine Gael Party, Deputy James Dillon, whom I met today and is still hale and hearty and very proud of his contributions of that occasion. Now, apparently under pressure from the Department of Agriculture, its independent status is being taken away without any written agreement with the United States of America, or any agreement on record that we can see amending that agreement. This institute is being dissolved and the moneys so graciously and generously given by the United States Government are being absorbed into the maw of the Department of Agriculture to distribute and administer as they think fit over the years ahead, under a new creature which would be subservient to the Department and through which the Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Finance can subsequently direct and control Irish agricultural activities in every area.

What we are talking about here is a very legitimate question put through the Chair asking the Minister to tell us in what way, if any, the agreement reached between Ireland and the United States of America back in 1954-55, has been abridged, changed or amended to bring in this legislation? We are also asking him what is happening here? Not alone are the farming community or the employees of the Agricultural Institute being subject to the whip of the Minister for Agriculture, but we now have the situation where something is being carried on behind the backs of the American Government. I say that in all seriousness. This is not a matter for telephone calls to the American Embassy asking if that will be all right. We would like to see the treaty between the Irish and American Governments amended. I would also like to see the document where the American Government authorised the Irish Government to proceed as they are proceeding in this legislation. We should be informed of the details of such an agreement. If there is an agreement amending this treaty, it should be placed in the Library for perusal by all Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas.

Dr. Martin

I was quite taken by the point raised by Senator West. I thought it had been answered by the Minister in the first place, but I feel now that it really has not. One line in the explanatory memorandum does not quite meet the case. I do not think section 10 can go forward until that agreement is made available to us.

Mr. Ferris

Mr. Clinton

In my view, the Senator does not have to see it.

Dr. West

That is a very expansive, trust uncle attitude—"You know I am always right". I would trust the Minister a long way but it would be a complete abrogation of my functions as a Member of the House if every time a Minister came in and said "There is an agreement, do not bother about it, you do not need to see it", which is what has been said to me, I sat down. I would not have raised this point if the agreement was available. I tried to check through the records this morning to see if the treaty signed in 1958 which established the institute had been amended. I could find no agreement, unless it had come through in the last day or two. There was nothing in the published list. I would like to know exactly what is the status of the agreement the Minister referred to. Is it a draft agreement? Has it been laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas? Has it gone through the requisite period downstairs and appeared since on the list and is now part of our statute? Or is it something that is being concocted at the moment? We cannot go on with this debate unless we see this agreement and know the status of the agreement. Is it a draft agreement? What is it? There is a big hole in this.

I wonder where that leaves us. Let me go back on the points I made earlier because I think they are rather important. First of all, I get the body corporate wrong. I concede the point. Then I said that the treaty was never mentioned. That was technically correct. The treaty was never mentioned by the Minister in his Second Stage speeches in any part of the debate or in the explanatory memorandum. There is a reference in the explanatory memorandum, which has no legal significance as the Minister knows only too well, which I will read into the record. On page 6, it says:

Section 54 provides for the treatment of any unexpended balances in the Capital and Endowment Funds of An Foras Talúntais in accordance with an agreement recently reached between the Government and the United States Authorities.

There is no mention of the treaty on which the institute was founded. This is an agreement recently reached. I contend that it is not an agreement with any legal status. It has not come before the Houses of the Oireachtas. This Bill is based on an alleged agreement. Was it just a telephone conversation or were there discussions between the Department of Foreign Affairs and the US authorities? The Department of Agriculture do not even know what is in the agreement.

There are some proprieties to be observed, and that is all that has to be done. If the people of the United States and the people of Ireland, through their Parliaments, come to an agreement, that is absolutely fine, no problems, no further arguments. That should be done first and then the Bill should be introduced. Maybe just the timing is wrong. I certainly cannot sit here and accept people saying that the agreement is between the Department of Foreign Affairs and the United States authorities. Which authorities? I am going to do a bit of telephone calling after this to find out what the United States' view of this is. Is it really an agreement, or are there discussions going on about agreements or about getting agreement on agreements? Where are we? The whole affair should be postponed at this stage until this agreement and the whole business has been sorted out. We cannot go on with the Bill on foot of an agreement which is not really an agreement.

Dr. Martin

I agree.

Mr. Clinton

I propose that the section stand.

Mr. Lenihan

We are entitled to basic information. When preparing the existing legislation—the Agricultural Institute Act, 1958—scrupulous regard was had to the agreement reached in 1954, and made effective in 1955, between Ireland and the United States of America in regard to the disposition of these funds. The actual phrase "the Agricultural Institute" is written into the treaty. Article 1 of the treaty empowers the Irish Government to use the funds for the purpose of the establishment of an agricultural institute to improve and develop the agricultural production and marketing potential of Ireland. That phrase "the Agricultural Institute" was transmitted from that treaty into the legislation passed in 1958. That phraseology is now being dissolved by section 10.

Section 10 says that "The institute is hereby dissolved", that is, the Agricultural Institute, which was established through the generosity of American moneys. The Irish Government accepted those moneys on the basis that they would establish an agricultural institute under article 1 of that agreement. Following that, legislation was introduced implementing an agricultural institute with all its functions. That is what we are now dissolving here by section 10.

We are entitled to know under what part of this Bill or under what proposed draft agreement that situation is being changed. The Minister made a glib answer, and was taken up by Senator Ferris, that section 54 as set out in the explanatory memorandum on page 6, provided for it. Section 54 does not provide for it. It refers to an agreement recently reached between the Government and United States authorities. Was that a telephone call? Was it an exchange of letters? What sort of approval was given? What sort of draft amendment to the treaty is going to be made? Although the explanatory memorandum refers to an agreement recently reached between the Government and the United States authorities, there is no mention of this in section 54 of the Bill—and it is the Bill which is important. Section 54, subsections (1), (2), (3) and (4) refer to the transfer of the moneys of the institute to the new authority. There is no mention whatever of any agreement recently reached by the Irish and American Governments.

The case is very strong that the Minister should take back the matter for further elucidation and come back with a more thorough understanding of what is involved. We shall be glad to suspend the debate here and adjourn for a week to enable the Minister to understand fully the situation. I appreciate that there are law officers involved in this, and the Department of Foreign Affairs are involved in it. We would be reneging completely on our duties if we were to allow the Minister to proceed with this legislation on the basis of a Bill that appears to run counter to a solemn agreement entered into by the Irish and American Governments. It is an international treaty and not just an agreement over the telephone. It has all the force of international law. The legislation under it still has the force of international law as implementing that treaty until that treaty is amended or abrogated. We are passing a Bill which completely abrogates both the treaty and the legislation under it. They can abrogate the legislation by the section we are discussing but the treaty I think still subsists. We are entitled to know whether there is a treaty in force between the Irish and American Governments and if we have a draft of the treaty. If there is no draft but there is an exchange of letters, we would like to see the letters. It is important that we should come clean with the American Government as well as with the Irish public and the agricultural industry and the agricultural scientists who have been working in the interests of the Irish agricultural industry in the Agricultural Institute heretofore.

Mr. Killilea

I am not legally minded but I have the document of this agreement. Now that we are, in section 10, declaring the institute dissolved, we are breaking this signed agreement. The Minister says he does not know much about the legal side of the matter either, but if we are doing such a thing, should we not see what we are doing? Is the Minister not running amok by breaking a treaty without giving us the contents of the agreement to the breaking of that treaty? It is, after all, as far as we know, still a treaty. By section 10 we are breaking that treaty.

Perhaps this new agreement between the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Ambassador is no more than that they whispered something to each other or one nodded to the other and said "That is all right". That is not good enough. You cannot deal with such agreements as you deal with a Fine Gael executive meeting in Dublin South County. It is more serious than that. We are still a democracy: we are heading slightly away from it but we still are one and we will fight to continue to be one. I should like to see this new agreement to the effect that the US were willing to have this Bill brought in.

Mr. Cowen

Irrespective of whether the Minister produces this agreement or not—and I doubt very much, having listened to the debate for the past 20 minutes, that he is going to produce it—the Minister, in reply to some of the speakers, made reference to the fact that the very strong language used in this section had to be used on the basis that, in regard to the advisory services, only portion of the powers was being transferred. Then when it came to the transfer of the powers of the Agricultural Institute, all powers were being transferred. This signifies how the Agricultural Institute stand when this section becomes law. They will be completely devoid of all powers. The Agricultural Institute in the future will be dictated to by departmental officials and by the Minister in regard to their essential research work. Suppose the Agricultural Institute tackle some particular project and investigate the research end of it—and we are all aware of how tedious and long-drawn out this research work can be-and having gone a certain distance in this project, the Minister then asks them: "How far have you gone in this? How much money have you spent? You seem to be spending a lot of money?" They might not be in a position to say to the Minister "We will continue with this and we may conclude in another month or so." The Minister would have the power to say "I think you have gone far enough. We will use this money to some other effect and go ahead with some other project."

In the Minister's reply to statements made here he clearly illustrated that the words used in this section, "The Institute is hereby dissolved", had to be used because all powers were being taken from the Agricultural Institute. I would like to know what the future for the members of the Institute is. The fact that the majority of research staff have openly stated through the medium of the press that they have grave reservations about this Bill clearly highlights where they think they stand. I feel confident that they had section 10 in their minds when they made that statement. It is essential that this agreement be put before the House. I feel it is not in writing and that it was a telephone call or some message from one Department to the other in regard to this agreement and that this is why we cannot use it.

Professor Quinlan

Could I move the adjournment of the House for half an hour or so to give an opportunity to the Minister and the other Senators to have tea? We have not got a quorum at the moment. So, in the absence of a quorum, I call the attention of the House to that fact and I suggest that we adjourn for half-an-hour.

Business suspended at 6.40 p.m. and resumed at 7.15 p.m.

Mr. W. Ryan

Before the teabreak we had quite a lot of talk about this agreement between the USA and the Irish Government as regards the dissolution of An Foras Talúntais. I do not intend to dwell on that but to say that I heartily agree with what has been said from this side of the House concerning the agreement. The agreement certainly in my opinion should be made known to the Members of this House and of the other House. Of course, it is not the first time that we have had secret agreements in recent times. It was only a few weeks ago when we had a mining Bill going through both Houses and the Minister at that time refused—not the Minister in question now but another Minister refused—to make certain information available to both Houses. I think that was very wrong. I accept the Minister's word that there has been an agreement but what I would like to know is who was consulted in this country as regards the agreement. I am quite sure that it was the Department of Foreign Affairs that finalised the agreement with the American Government.

The Department of Foreign Affairs, I imagine, would know very little about agriculture and I take it that it was the Department of Agriculture that briefed them in order to get this agreement passed between both countries. I wonder was the council of the Agricultural Institute or the director of the Agricultural Institute consulted about this agreement? Were their views put to the USA Government? If they were, this agreement might not have gone through at all. I am certain that the council of An Foras Talúntais and the director and his staff would not agree to dissolving the Agricultural Institute. As the county committees of agriculture are another group that are involved in this, I wonder were they asked? I am quite sure they were not because I happen to be a member of a committee and I know that we heard nothing about it.

The Minister, long before this Bill was introduced, asked for submissions from most of the rural organisations. I am quite sure that in all the submissions he got no rural organisations suggested that An Foras Talúntais should be done away with. Yet he went against the advice of all rural organisations as far as that was concerned. An Foras Talúntais are highly respected and admired by the agricultural community all over Ireland. Without being disrespectful in any way to the officials of the Department of Agriculture 1 say that in the lifetime of the institute, for the 19 years they have been there, they have done more for agriculture and achieved more in that 19 years than the Department of Agriculture achieved in 70 years. I think it is certainly a bad day's work for agriculture in this country to abolish the Agricultural Institute.

I was listening to other speakers trying to persuade us that the new body would be completely independent. If you shout that until the cows come home nobody will believe it because you have taken the independence An Foras Talúntais had and you have brought them back under the umbrella of the Department of Agriculture. There is no use in saying that the Department of Agriculture and the directors of An Foras Talúntais and the others were a happy family. They were not; but it was not the fault of An Foras; it was the fault of the Department of Agriculture. I happened to be a member of the council of An Foras Talúntais in the early years and we had pretty hot meetings at that time. We were very fortunate that we had a very good director, a man with strong will and he was more forceful than the people who represented the Department on An Foras. Certainly, if it had been left to the people who represented the Department of Agriculture, An Foras Talúntais would not have gone as far as they have gone.

It has already been mentioned here that the money for the establishment of An Foras Talúntais was American Aid money. I think this money was given to Ireland in 1948 or 1949 and it took from that time to 1958 finally to decide how the money would be used. Consultations had to take place from time to time with the American Government. Indeed, I might say during that period we had a number of changes of Government here. I think we had three or four changes but, all Governments agreed on the same thing: that an agricultural institute should be set up.

We got almost £2 million; £840,000 to begin the work of An Foras Talúntais. We had £1 million which was invested and the interest on that money is still being used. The £1 million that we got from America and also the £840,000 are now being transferred from an independent body back into. I might say, the Department, because it is the Department who will have the big say in the present set-up. At that time, when it was established, the council and directors decided to buy land and property around this country. They bought big farms in Old Park and New Park and many other places around the country and they have various substations. No later than a month ago they leased a farm in my area to carry out some kind of dairy research there. It has already been mentioned here that £1 million was invested at that time. It must now mean that An Foras have at least £10 million worth of property—if it stops at that. This property is going to be taken over from that body and used for some other purpose because certainly it will not be used as well as it could be used in the hands of the director of the Agricultural Institute and his council.

The council was composed of men representing a number of farming organisations—two or three from the universities and one or two from the Department. In the early days the Department were represented by the Deputy Secretary. For the first few years money was available. They had plenty of money from their own resources. But then they had to go to the Department, and I remember at that time it was difficult enough to get money from the Department. During my time there my party were in office. The director and the whole council at one time had to go to the Department to prove that they needed this money. I have a feeling they would not have had any difficulty in getting the money were it not for the fact that some senior officials in the Department thought they should not get it.

This is the letter sent by the Minister for Foreign Affairs:

Excellency

I have the honour to refer to the Agreement between Ireland the United States of America respecting the use of Counterpart for the establishment of an Agricultural Institute, signed in Dublin on 16 April 1958, which was subsidiary to the Agreement between Ireland and the United States of America Governing Disposition of the Balance in the Counterpart Special Account signed in Dublin on 17 June 1954, and to propose that, the funds referred to in the former Agreement having being placed at the disposal of the Agricultural Institute (An Foras Talúntais) and the requisite reports having been furnished, it be hereby terminated and the Government of Ireland released from all obligations thereunder.

If the foregoing is acceptable to your Excellency's Government I have the honour to propose that this Note and Your Excellency's reply concurring therein shall constitute an Agreement between our two Governments, which shall enter into force on the date of your Excellency's reply.

Accept, Excellency, the renewed assurance of my highest consideration.

I can read the reply from the American authority, which is a bit longer, but one paragraph explains and gives their agreement and that is the last paragraph.

An Cathaoirleach

As long as the Minister is prepared to place the full text in the Library it would be sufficient for him to read the relevant paragraph.

Dr. West

The whole debate this afternoon has hinged on the text of the agreement. I think we should hear the full text of this letter.

Mr. Clinton

It is wasting the time of the House.

Dr. West

It is not wasting the time. This is what we have been at all the afternoon.

An Cathaoirleach

The Minister appears to be willing to read the full text and there appears to be a desire on the part of a considerable number of Members of the House that he should do so. So, if the Minister is willing, perhaps we will let him get on with it.

Mr. Clinton

The letter is as follows:

Excellency, I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your note of January 5th, 1977, which reads as follows:

I have the honour to refer to the Agreement between Ireland and the United States of America in respect of the use of the Counterpart for the establishment of an Agricultural Institute signed in Dublin on the 16 April 1958, which was a subsidiary to the Agreement between Ireland and the United States of America Governing Disposition of the Balance in the Counterpart Special Account signed in Dublin on the 17 June 1954, and to propose that, the funds referred to in the former Agreement having being placed at the disposal of the Agricultural Institute (An Foras Talúntais) and the requisite reports having been furnished, it be hereby terminated and the Government of Ireland released from all obligations thereunder.

Accept, Excellency, the renewed assurance of my highest consideration.

Your proposals are acceptable to the United States Government and I confirm that your Note and this reply shall be regarded as constituting an Agreement between our two Governments in the matter effective from the date of this reply.

Accept, Excellency, the renewed assurance of my highest considerations.

That is how agreement was reached. I said agreement was reached and that the Department of Foreign Affairs dealt with this matter as they normally do and that I was not legally qualified to interpret whether this was absolutely legal or not. It was apparently a simple agreement and no such thing as a treaty, such as was emphasised here this afternoon. I am assuming the matter is now understood and accepted.

Dr. West

I cannot accept this, because this is the first thing we knew about this. Nobody has ever heard of this correspondence before. There is no record of it whatever. The document I referred to previously and to which the Minister has already referred is published in the Eire Treaty series 1957-59. The title page reads "Treaty Series 1958, No. 7, Agreement between Ireland and the United States of America. Subsidiary to the Agreement of 17th June, 1954, respecting the use of the Counterpart for the establishment of an Agricultural Institute, signed in Dublin 16th April, 1958." The point is that that agreement is an agreement between the United States and Ireland, not between the Government of the United States and the representative from the Government of Ireland. In other words, it is something that has been processed through the normal parliamentary procedure. It was laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas.

So the correspondence which the Minister has quoted is just correspondence. I am glad to see that there was some correspondence and that there actually is some substance to what the Minister has said, but let us recall what we elicited earlier in the debate. The Minister pointed out that he was responsible for this Bill. He knew everything about the Bill. Then, when we asked him about the reference to the agreement, he said it was in the explanatory memorandum, which has no legal significance at all. Then the Minister comes in and says he has never seen the agreement.

We are being asked to swallow this. This is not a party political matter. There are the serried ranks of Fianna Fáil waiting to hop up after me. Fine, but any Opposition would do this in a situation in which there was a lacuna of that nature in the Bill. The Minister more or less said to me when I raised the question first of all "Trust me; I trust the Department of Foreign Affairs." The Minister has shown that there is a substantive correspondence and there is clearly going to be agreement but when will that agreement be ratified? We should be discussing this Bill and this section after an agreement has been properly ratified between the United States and Ireland and not when the Government or some Government officer in Ireland has written to some Government officer in the United States and had a nice pleasant correspondence starting "Your Excellency" and all that sort of stuff. There is none of "Your Excellency" in this; that is an agreement.

Mr. Clinton

The Minister and the American Ambassador.

Dr. West

If it was an official agreement, surely the Minister would have seen it? The Minister for Agriculture, the person involved.

Mr. Clinton

I accepted that we were proceeding legally.

Dr. West

The point is that the Minister comes into the House with a Bill which we have resisted for various very good reasons on this side of the House, as any Opposition would, as the gentlemen over there would resist if they were in Opposition. I was in Opposition with them not so long ago. They would have been hopping up and down resisting this as hard as they could and they would have been perfectly right. This is what the democratic process is about and what I am doing is well within my rights. I have elicited from the Minister that he never saw this correspondence and yet he came in with this Bill. That is a really preposterous situation. I am quite prepared to acknowledge that there will be an agreement and that it will be properly ratified legally but I do not hold that that is the position now.

My argument—and I said this all along when I paid a tribute to the Minister and his advisers—is that the techniques that sometimes work in Brussels are not necessarily the ones to apply here. This is being pushed through. There is a steamroll on. When I heard that the Minister had brought in a Bill without ever reading the text of the agreement, I said that there was something funny going on, and it has turned out that something very funny is going on. The proper procedure is that the agreement be placed before the Houses of the Oireachtas, that it be ratified and then the Bill should be brought in. But how can we go on discussing section 10 when we have an agreement which is only correspondence, though I agree it will become an agreement.

This is a Parliament. It is not just a Fine Gael cumann or a Fianna Fáil cumann or a Labour cumann. It is not any cumann. It is now quarter to eight and we are still on section 10, the crucial section. I still hold that the agreement should be ratified by laying it before the Oireachtas so that we have an opportunity to table a motion against it. When has it appeared on the Order Paper of either of the two Houses? That is when this agreement becomes a legal agreement, after it has gone through the Oireachtas. Why should we on this occasion, just to facilitate the Minister, bypass the normal procedures? That is what I want to know. I would have been quite happy—as I have said, I would have got the 6.30 train to Cork—if the Minister could have produced an agreement that was really an agreement that had been ratified and gone through in the normal way.

Professor Quinlan

Senator, do not make the tribute too long.

Mr. Killilea

"The institute is hereby dissolved." It is now being taken away and put into hiding. As a spokesman for our party said in the other House, the first thing that a solid Government would do would be to restore it to the same situation as it was in.

Earlier today, when I made a point concerning the Agricultural Institute or An Foras Talúntais, that it was educational and that it was giving other services, Senator McCartin was quick to his feet to say "No, it never did." But we proved the point quite emphatically when we said: "yes it did" and we quoted the terms of reference in the original Bill. My point still holds, that it was about and around An Foras Talúntais that this new organisation should be created, not by means of the words in section 10: "The institute is hereby dissolved." This is where the eternal mistake has happened in regard to this great organisation that has done a lot of work, most of it voluntary, with enthusiasm, with a willingness and an eagerness always to try and find something extra and something special for that part of the community that needed it so much. Each year and each week and each month they are making progress and they are continuing to make progress.

They will not make progress much longer, because now they are being brought into a political grip under this new board to be created or to be selected by the Minister. I feel certain that those people in authority in the Agricultural Institute will not be happy about them, and have no intention of agreeing with the political "wigwags" that will be picked and if we are to judge by the way the Minister's Government have picked members of other boards they certainly could not be happy with them.

We have seen instances of it in my town. Some of the people are on State boards looking after CIE and they are not able to drive lawnmowers. It is a disgrace. To bring the institute to that level is humiliating. It is one of the biggest marks against the Minister, with the exception of his calamity of 1974. I suppose that will go down in history.

The three grave mistakes the Minister made are that he forgot about the farmers in 1974, he destroyed the institute in 1977, and he defended the taxation of the small farmers in late 1976. These are the three miracles of the man who is being personified by his own party and by his own hacks as the superman of all time for agriculture and for agricultural industry. The three most important points in agriculture are the very ones the Minister stood firmly against.

Mr. Horgan

The Minister, in his Second Reading speech, says there was a common factor among the suggestions submitted, that the advisory services would need to be re-organised. Even though the Minister recognises that common factor, that is contrary to what we read in section 10, that the advisory service is hereby dissolved. There is a big difference between "re-organised" and "dissolved". The people engaged in agriculture are entitled to be concerned. Far from the attitude of the Government and the Minister allaying that concern, it will only tend to confuse and give people the impression here that the Minister has some cynical reason for bulldozing this Bill through the House. We should have clear undertakings about the board that will replace the institute, to the extent of the advice and help that it will give to farmers, especially at a time when we are standing at the crossroads in agriculture, when there is more than ample evidence that the Department of Agriculture have fallen down completely in their ability to influence agricultural policy in the Common Market. We heard the leader of the IFA stating recently that it was they, after a lot of difficulty, who convinced the Minister as to what the green £ was. The leader of the IFA said it took them nearly two years to educate the Minister. If we are to believe that—and we have no reason not to believe him.

Mr. Ferris

He never said that.

Mr. McGowan

I heard him stating the difficulty he had in educating the Minister for Agriculture about the benefits the green £ would bring to agriculture. The record can be produced, if necessary. Having accepted that the IFA took so long to educate the Department and the Minister on the value of the green £, it is only fair that we should be concerned here about what the new board will do, how powerful they will be and what way they will influence agricultural policy.

Will we be more in touch with the policies of the Common Market? Will the average farmer in rural Ireland today have better advice? Will he be more attuned to what is happening in the Common Market? The Common Market policies, which affect the west of Ireland, are based on what happens in Belgium, France and England. They are totally unrelated to the needs of the average farmer in rural Ireland today. This board will do nothing but perhaps bring about easier administration for the Minister. Our fear is that you are going to produce a board that does nothing to allay the fears that exist already in the agricultural community, that is, that we have a Department that is totally out of touch with the needs of the agricultural community. This has been borne out by the fact that, for example, the farm modernisation policy today is totally unsuited to many farmers in the west. This is due to the totally out of touch administration by the Department of Agriculture.

Therefore, I say I am entitled to question this now before we agree to dissolve an institute that has advised and assisted the farmers in every way. It may not be a perfect advisory service, but we should look at it, extend it, and help to bring what is happening in Europe today to the notice of the farmers and to bring the voice of the farmers to influence policy in Europe. That is not being done by the Department or the Minister, and I fear that it will not be done by this board. I can see nothing here but pure adamancy and dictatorship. That is not what the farmers want. With one voice they propose to guillotine the motion and with another voice say that we must have confidence and trust.

I would ask the Minister to be reasonable about this and to accept that a very serious step is being taken and that the people in agriculture are entitled to be alarmed. Over the last number of years we have seen very little progress in agriculture. Less than two years ago I put down a motion for discussion here, "that this House notes the right of those engaged in agriculture." A Senator from that side of the House complimented the Minister and said that he was recognised as the tiger of Europe. I recognised him as the white elephant of Europe, because there is no Minister in Europe more out of touch with what is happening than our Minister for Agriculture. This is borne out by everybody who is interested in agriculture in the west of Ireland.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.

The Seanad adjourned at 8.30 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Wednesday, 11th May, 1977.

Seanad Éireann debate - Tuesday, 10 May 1977