I dealt at some length with this particular Bill on the First Reading. I stated what the problem was, and I do not intend to go into that side of the question now. I just want to touch on one of the general principles that underlie this Bill, and that will underlie a number of Bills that will be introduced in this Session. I stated on the First Reading that this Bill was prepared in consultation with the trade, and that so far as its main principles were concerned it was in general approved by the trade. It is a Bill to regulate the trade, and it seems a little extraordinary in that state of affairs, in view of the fact that the trade itself, both producers and exporters, is in favour of it, that it would be necessary at all to introduce a Bill like this, that gives rather drastic powers to a Government department to regulate the business which these people are more nearly interested in than anybody else. It looks rather like forcing people to make money. Well up to a certain point it is. This particular Bill is, if I might use the expression, a sort of voluntary compulsion, and the point I wish to stress is, number one, that there would be no need for a Bill like this if both sides of the trade, that is, both the producers and exporters, were properly organised for the purposes of their own business.
And the second aspect of it that I want to stress is that in spite of this Bill, in spite of the fact that we are forcing the trade, so to speak, to organise itself, any of the possible good effects of the measure will be negatived unless all concerned realise that they have got to help themselves, that in anything that we can do for them we cannot really improve either the egg trade, or the butter trade, or any side of our agricultural business, unless the people themselves, the people who are really interested, the people whose business it is to look after it—unless they begin to improve it themselves, and unless they realise that they will be competing in the future with other countries that have had for a long time all the possible advantages that they can get out of this Bill, and that are, in addition, more wide-awake, more enterprising than we are unfortunately at the present moment in this country. That is the underlying consideration in connection with this Bill and in connection with a number of Bills of the same sort which are to be introduced in this Dáil, even in this Session. These are the only points that I intend to deal with now, as I have dealt with the Bill at some length on the First Reading. I beg to move for Second Reading.