Though, in principle, I oppose the measure before the House, nevertheless my principal regret is that it has taken the Minister so long to get it here. It is probably the second most important debate that we have had in the area of agriculture in the six years since I came into this House. At that time we debated the Bill which the Minister is amending and we debated the farm modernisation scheme. I think it is ten years since a previous Minister for Agriculture requested the General Council of the Committees of Agriculture to prepare a report on the reorganisation of the advisory services. I regard them as ten of the most important years in the history of agriculture. In those years we had the hope of our involvement in the European Economic Community and the encouragement which that hope gave to farmers throughout the country.
Those were the years when we saw the start of the effect of research and advice on agriculture. Those were the years, too, when the EEC increased prices and guaranteed markets and farmers got the encouragement to increase production. For the first time they were given an opportunity to earn a comparable income in return for their labours, the sort of reward that it was possible to get in other industries.
To a large extent we wasted our opportunities. We have not made the progress we should have made. I am not blaming the present Minister entirely for that situation. We failed to take advantage of our richest natural resource to create opportunities and to solve our unemployment problem. We have wasted too much time. For that reason I sincerely regret that the Minister has wasted two years in changing what was not an ideal solution to the problem but was at least as good a solution as any Minister could have devised at the time.
Why, so many years ago, did one of his predecessors in the Department of Agriculture feel that it was necessary to reorganise the advisory services? The General Council of the Committees of Agriculture, in common with all other interested groups, gave their views at that time. Deputy Blaney left the Department and was succeeded by Deputy Gibbons who consulted and looked at the situation for years and years. He left office without introducing the changes which everybody felt were necessary and desirable. He was succeeded by Deputy Clinton who, after four years in office, succeeded in getting his proposals off the ground, proposals for the reorganisation of research, education and training for which there was wide agreement at the time. At that stage it was already late. The further two-year delay is inexcusable in a period when the agricultural industry was faced with so many new challenges. The sooner this Bill becomes law the better.
What was wrong with the advisory services in the first place? Most of the arguments being put forward are irrelevant from my point of view. I am not trying to grind any political axe on this question. The Minister could make many valid arguments in favour of doing what he is doing. The previous Minister advanced many good reasons for his decision. One way or the other, the average farmer will not become excited about the difference between the two Bills. The changes introduced by the present Minister will not make a great difference to agriculture five or ten years from now.
What was wrong with the advisory services ten years ago? The biggest problem was that they needed more advisers. This Bill has not changed the situation. In my time the advisory services were never able to reach the number of farmers with whom they should have been doing business. As it is, only one-third of all farmers have sought any sort of advice in recent years and a large number of those were probably not interested in advice but in seeking classification under the modernisation scheme in order to collect grants for projects or development. Nevertheless, the agricultural advisers cannot reach the people who are most in need of their advice.
It has become popular to say that the modernisation scheme has involved them in all sorts of paper work. I never completely accepted that. The kernel of the problem is that the work of the average agricultural adviser cannot be done in a great hurry. Classification under the modernisation scheme would take little time if the average agricultural adviser wanted to fit as many as possible into the day. In order to give a good advisory service to a farmer, an agricultural adviser must be flexible. He must not be tied to a timetable. He must be prepared to match his activities with the requirements of the people he serves. He must be prepared to stay in his office on a good day when the sun is shining and nobody wants to talk to him. He must be in a position to give service to farmers whenever they are ready to talk to him. He must be in a position to search for those farmers with whom he thinks he might be able to develop a relationship.
In the west we had another problem which we thought could have been solved. Young advisers tended to start work in the west and then moved to better areas. The result was that the less developed and poorer agricultural regions had a high turnover of young inexperienced advisers and farmers were not able to develop the right relationship with them. That was a problem that could have been solved without spending so long considering it. That was the second biggest problem that we had.
I never felt that there was exceptional difficulty in getting the results of research across to the average farmer or the average agricultural adviser. However the advisory services did not have the facilities to enable them to follow up their own education and experience. We had a situation where the best farmers in almost every area began to lose confidence in the ability of the local agricultural adviser to take them to the top of the ladder. We had the best farmers in every sphere of agriculture seeking advice and assistance outside of the advisory services. The top 3 or 4 per cent of farmers went abroad for their education and went to the top specialists in the Department and in the Agricultural Institute. There may not have been official contact between farmers and the top people in the Department and the Institute.
Nevertheless, I believe that is what happened. As a result there was a drop in the morale of the advisory service, which was not entirely good. An effort could and should have been made to render the agricultural advisory service capable of keeping up in the front at all times and in every area. Therefore the necessity for the appointment of specialised advisers in the different areas was certainly more important than either the marrying of research and education or the dividing of them once the marriage had taken place. The advisory service could have been improved considerably either way.
There was the other problem, too, which we cannot and should not overlook. Very often the committees of agriculture did not always contain a sufficient number with the expertise necessary to give the leadership to the advisory services which should have been given. This could have been improved without the necessity for the radical change introduced in this legislation. There was a more important role for the local elected representatives, and as time went on the Minister could have found other means to encourage county councils to select at least a number of better people for every committee of agriculture, so that this sort of leadership could be given to the advisory services. So much could have been done without the need to wait so long.
When one listens to the argument being made in the other House and here today, I get the impression that most of it is not relevant to the needs of agriculture at the present time and will not make very much difference to the average farmer who is waiting for an opportunity to develop his resources. In the past one could say that the Agricultural Institute had failed to get their message across. We had a number of examples of this. There is the difference between what the Agricultural Institute have proved it is possible to do on their own research farms and also on some of the extension farms selected by the committees of agriculture and, on the other hand, what is being achieved by the vast majority of farmers.
There is the question of socio-economic advisers, a most important area when one considers that 40 per cent of the farmers in Connacht and Ulster had incomes of less than £20 a week, according to the most recent report published in 1977. One can see the importance of the introduction of socio-economic advisers when one realises that 50 per cent of farms in the north and north-west are in the hands of terminal families. The average age of the people in whose hands so much of this land is held is very high. In all the debate and discussion there has not been a single word about socio-economic advisers. While this has been provided for in directive 159, and I understand that the people in Brussels have taken note of it, no progress has been made on this. It is regrettable that we should have so much idle talk about irrelevant issues when something as important as this element has been entirely left out. What the advisory service needs more than anything else is extra financing and the appointment of extra agricultural advisers. The Minister has not said that he is thinking of this problem.
When we see the facilities for agricultural education being taken from Galway university we realise that it will be difficult for people from the west of Ireland to acquire degrees. It will certainly have that effect. We begin to worry about whether anybody at all intends that the necessary level of advisory services are to be provided. When we consider the £150 million that has been offered to us from Brussels over the next ten years, we must ask ourselves where it will be spent, how it will be spent and who will organise the spending of it. I would have seen in that area a most important role for the agricultural advisory services. We can see at the moment the long waiting list of farmers who are looking for advice, looking for assistance with the drawing up of land reclamation programmes and waiting five months for a farm building inspector to come out to them, not to consider the fact that the staff of the Agricultural Credit Corporation are on strike. All these things are militating against the development of such an important industry at the moment.
We are shadow boxing here. After two years we cannot find any better argument to produce than a whole paragraph of the Minister's speech trying to justify the title of a Bill, as if it makes the slightest bit of difference what we call it or as if the average farmer were remotely interested in whether the name of that Bill is in Irish or English or what the words or terms mean. The average farmer wants assistance with development, and this country needs the development of the agricultural industry if we are to solve our unemployment problems. We have processing facilities awaiting the produce to go into them. We have so many things requiring to be done and yet this is how we spend our time when the Minister has been two years in office. We still have not got down to the basic necessity of reorganising the business so that we can get on with the job.
The morale of the average agricultural adviser was never lower than it is at the moment. They do not know whether there is any intention on the part of the Minister or the Government to extent the agricultural advisory services. They do not know whether it is intended that they will just be allowed to die a slow death and that the co-operatives will be expected to take up and to fill the vacuum. It should be clearly indicated by the Minister and the Department at a time like this the direction he intends the advisory services and the research services to go. Let us leave out the argument about whether they are on their own or not and let us clear the air as to whether the agricultural industry are intended to provide their own advisory services or whether it will be the policy of the present Government to provide from central funds all the advice and guidance needed by farmers; or what sort of combination of the two the Minister has in mind. We owe that to the people who have acquired the education and skills, have accepted the job and embarked on a career in giving advice in agriculture. At this late hour we owe it to them to clarify the road ahead, where they should see their future and whether the service they are in is coming or going. There is much unrest in this area.
I remember 10 or 15 years ago when any group of people interested in agricultural advice could call on their agricultural adviser any time of day or night or Sunday morning and they found him willing and interested. I have been in contact with people in Macra na Feirme who cannot find an agricultural adviser to come out and give them a talk in the evening, as traditionally agricultural advisers did. They cannot find them, for whatever reason, and if there is some sort of a problem between the advisory service and the Department or the committees of agriculture, then we should know exactly what is going on and when this problem is to be resolved. These things cannot be done in the middle of the day. I always believed in giving the maximum freedom to the agricultural advisory service. I have never seen the agricultural adviser as a nine-to-five man or woman. That is the line on which I would expect them to go because they must be flexible in the services they give.
Since the introduction of the farm modernisation scheme there is a lot of discontent in the whole area. An agricultural adviser's role should be to give education and to take the results of research from the Agricultural Institute and to bring it down to the farms. He should be a development officer in his own area. In most areas and parishes in rural Ireland they are the only development officers around. They should have a wide function in relation to the advice they bring to farmers from the specialists in the various fields, seeking out and encouraging people to avail of the retirement scheme, deciding on areas of land in parts of the country which are suitable for different crops and uses. In addition to that, the whole area of forestry should come into their domain. Our efforts towards forestry have been a complete failure, and while that may not be totally relevant here it should be included in their area also. It is another question concerning the use of land and the means of developing agricultural resources. They are the people best equipped to deal with it. This is not being done at the moment. These are things which should be considered now.
On average land in the west and north west of Ireland, a bad average, the Agricultural Institute can achieve, and have been consistently achieving, production of something like 800 gallons of milk per acre using their own techniques, an ordinary enough type of housing and their own developed techniques of drainage and reclamation. Looking around at the rest of the region, at the best that has been achieved on the extension farms and by the top 3 per cent of farmers in the area, one realises that the Agricultural Institute have been doing a lot of work, the benefit of which has not been handed down to the average farmer and put into practice.
We could also take the other example of the new technique in land drainage which was developed by the Agricultural Institute in some of their experimental stations in the north west as far back, I would say, as ten years ago. After ten years we find that in Archdale, in County Fermanagh, the Northern Ministry can point out its effects over a seven or an eight-year period. The farmers of a small area in the North of Ireland with similar land can have as many as 20 machines developed and designed to carry out the work which was pioneered by the Agricultural Institute and here, in the South of Ireland, we have not taken it beyond the research stage and we have not more than one or two machines in the whole country available to do the work. This is a sad reflection on the way in which the results of the advisory services have been passed on.
Much of what is being talked about is almost completely irrelevant to the whole subject of the development of agriculture. The matters we should be discussing are not being discussed. The whole question is: when are we going to get down to the job of developing the advisory services? Assuming the Minister gets his Bill, can he give us an assurance that some effort will be made to provide the agricultural industry with a level of advisory service that is necessary for its development? If we look at the whole situation we must come to the conclusion that education, training and encouragement are most necessary. This must come through a stronger agricultural advisory service. We must not think in terms of increasing at the rate of 10 or 15 per cent. We need to increase the level of agricultural advisory services by 100 per cent. What hope is there that we can do this in the years ahead? Already we are making it more difficult by the withdrawal of services from Galway University. Already we are making it more difficult for graduates from the west to enter the area of agricultural training. There is no sign that we are providing for more graduates in any of our universities. If in the morning the Minister makes a decision, the graduates are not there.
We know that in addition to the ordinary graduates we need socio-economic advisers and we will need a whole field of specialists in every area of agriculture, specialists for whom money will be provided to travel abroad to see the best that is being done, to know what is happening in Holland and Denmark, to be completely familiar with the most modern techniques. We know that they have not these facilities at the moment; the average agricultural adviser is finding it difficult to travel to another area or another county to undertake any research or education he wants to do for himself. We know there is a pennypinching attitude. I am not blaming the Department of Agriculture, because they can only spend the money that is available to them.
These are the areas at which we must be looking if we are genuinely to seek to develop the agricultural industry, through research, through the tying up of research in education.
A 40- or 50-acre farmer, who may not be making maximum use of the whole area he already has, can borrow £40,000 or £50,000 from the ACC and put it into an extension of his holding and I am amazed that our Department cannot see that money borrowed to invest in a stronger advisory service can be repaid. Whatever money is available is not being spent to the best advantage. The amount of money being spent by the Department of Agriculture on the whole area of research is approximately £3 million. It is an insignificant figure when one compares the increased production that should be achieved in a small area.
If we look back at the result of the small farm incentive bonus scheme— and at that time we did not have the farm modernisation scheme and the agricultural adviser was not tied to a programme as he is today—we will see what a little bit of financial incentive, together with intensive advice, can do to increase production. We will see it even in 1974 and 1975 if we take the figures of the people who borrowed the World Bank money when the average farmer was finding it difficult to maintain his standards. We see an increase in incomes over those years by the people who borrowed this money because they were availing of advice at the time. When one sees what can be achieved on a small number of farms, given that sort of involvement, one realises what could be done for the country through the proper development of our resources.
Then we see three years being wasted debating something which to my mind, is largely irrelevant to the question of the development of the agricultural industry. I know that the Minister and his advisers can sit down and make every sort of argument for any sort of change. Indeed, one could pick any two lines in that Bill at random and change them and produce strong arguments, but I do not think that the average farmer or adviser would be very interested in the sort of arguments being put forward because it does not make the slightest bit of difference to him.
That is the most of what I wanted to say. I have no desire to delay the Minister because I know that every minute we delay this we are living with the uncertainty in the industry. Whatever the Minister intends to do should be done as quickly as possible so that people will know where they stand. Before the Minister leaves the House I should be very grateful if he would tell us what plans he has for the financing of these services. I know that the Department of Agriculture have already gone back on some of their commitments of financial assistance to the Agricultural Institute and I know the director has said in the last month that the work of the Agricultural Institute has been seriously hampered for lack of funds and that some of their programmes will have to be called off. I know there are staff in the Agricultural Institute over the past two years who have been on notice from time to time that whether or not they will be kept on depends on the availability of money. That is an area we could do well to discuss and clarify so that we will know exactly what is available and whether the Minister intends to finance the Agricultural Institute or whether they will have to earn their own keep in the future.
