I was disappointed when the Minister of State yesterday evening did not in fact supply his script to us because I was somewhat in the dark as to what we had under discussion.
The Minister for Agriculture has made the sum of £200,000 available to the Pigs and Bacon Commission. I understand that this is entirely for marketing, that the levy to the Pigs and Bacon Commission is to be raised from 52½ to 65p and that the levy to the producer has been scrapped. I presume that most of what I have assumed is in this document before me.
I must welcome this contribution by the Government and by the Minister to the PBC, a body who have had more than their share of problems over the past few years. I hope that in the granting of this £200,000 which I understand is guaranteed for this year and next year, all interests in the pig industry were consulted and that there was a fair degree of agreement. I would not say that they would all agree to the same thing at the same time, considering their task, but they should be on the high road to an integrated system in which the best possible developments would take place in the best interests of the pig industry.
This body have had a very chequered history. What seemed to have been a reasonably straightforward case of marketing of pigs on the same lines as Bord Bainne on behalf of Irish farmers, broke down drastically in the last couple of years. I understand that there was a fair amount of infighting of one description or another, and there was a lot of bad feeling inside in the PBC. Most important of all, whatever one would have to say about the staff relations, the problem was that our produce on our foreign markets was not getting to the places where the greatest price would be paid for it. I would like to hear the Minister say today that all the interests involved were contacted with long and tedious negotiations on this point between all the people involved. If it happened that we had the same degree of messing between all the factions involved that we had in the last few years and if we did not get better results £200,000 of ratepayers' money would be misappropriated. If all sectors in the pig industry rally to their own support as a coherent unit, the £200,000 is a small enough price. I congratulate the Minister on making that sum available. It will be a very small sum if it does what I hope it will do. One would hope that if the desired effect is seen to be forthcoming the sum will be increased in the years to come.
Nowadays, with the fantastic competition within the EEC and outside it that our products, particularly our pig meat, meet, we will have to have the highest possible level of marketing techniques. In the past a number of processors here saw fit to decide to bypass the PBC. Unfortunately, in the long term this is bad.
In view of the decision of the EEC court yesterday vis-à-vis the 2 per cent farm levy, what is the legality of the levies with the PBC, particularly with the problems they have encountered? The marketing angle must be 100 per cent better. Of course, we will have to wait to see how this injection of money works. We will have to see how efficient the PBC become. It will only take a very short period of time until we know where we stand vis-à-vis that. The pig farmers today are not having a good time, and we would ask the Minister to ensure that every chance is given to the people who are heavily committed in financial terms to pig production. I am aware that a great number of units are in a lot of trouble at the moment and that the £200,000 for the marketing of pigs will not cure that trouble. I ask the Minister to take great note of problems in the pig industry. I hope that the Government will see fit, in the not too distant future, to ensure that term loans at proper interest rates will be available to those people, because our pig business is very very important to the Exchequer. We cannot afford any further erosion in our pig numbers. They have been static. We know that the pig industry works in cycles over every three or four years. It is very important from a producer's point of view that the money now allocated to the PBC will be used for the orderly marketing of pigs where this is possible. On occasions when the PBC had outstanding markets, particularly in Japan and other like countries, they found that we did not have enough bacon to supply the markets. When we had a surplus of bacon as such, all our other competitors seemed to have the same surplus and the producer suffered all the time.
We welcome the £200,000, provided it is put to good use, that the various factors involved in the pig industry will accept it as a new lease of life, and that they will co-operate together in the best interests of the industry and of the producers generally and that processors will not break away as they did in the past on their argument that the PBC were too cumbersome, they did not identify the markets quickly enough and that their own salesmen were able to do that much more efficiently.
History has taught us a lesson in relation to a number of other commodities. It is vitally important that we have centralised marketing and an outstanding degree of unity on the foreign market vis-à-vis our marketing. There is no doubt that Bord Bainne have led the way in the sale of dairy products and there is no reason why the PBC, now that they have been revamped and have got this injection of money, should not be in a position to do a similar job. Thousands of pig farmers at this moment are looking towards the new PBC with appealing eyes. If it does not work this time, they will be in really serious trouble.
I understand that it is proposed in this motion that pork butchers be brought into the levy system. How is it proposed to do that considering that there is a fair number of very small pork butchers here? Do I take it that from a producer's point of view there will be no producer's levy, but that the processor's levy will be raised from 52½p to 65p per pig? If that were the case we would not want to go away with the idea that the producer would not pay anything. They would still pay more than their share as far as the processors were concerned, because those costs will be passed on to the primary producer.
This is a small but very important development looked forward to by a lot of pig farmers but it is not worth the paper it is written on unless the bacon factories play ball with the PBC. On the one hand they should find that the expertise in the PBC is of a sufficiently high standard to attract their confidence, and that by their sheer grit and determination they will sell Irish pig meat to the best possible markets in the best possible way in the future. In that context, I would hope the Minister's announcement of £200,000 to the PBC will set a spark that will ignite the entire pig industry.
