The discussion on this rather futile Estimate has already been prolonged. It has ranged over a wide field. I should not be intervening to prolong it further were it not that the Minister for Agriculture has seen fit over and over again in the course of his speech to attribute all sorts of low and evil motives to his opponents. It appears to me that the Government have been long enough in office by now to drop that sort of line of argument. The other evening we had Deputy Hugo Flinn comparing Deputy Davin to Rip Van Winkle; but I think the Government, and the Minister for Agriculture in particular, might be compared to Peter Pan, "the boy who would never grow up," because they are still exhibiting the same evidences of juvenility in their attitude towards all criticism that might perhaps have been excused when they first came into office, but is certainly not worthy of any Government with mature experience. The Minister for Agriculture thinks we are unreasonably cantankerous in our attitude towards all his proposals. Would the Minister consider for a moment why it is that we take that attitude? Does he mean that we are going around the country stirring up our followers to be hostile to his administration and to his efforts? If he thinks so, it is a highly misleading picture of the situation. Does it occur to him that we are deluged with appeals from people through the country who see themselves on the verge of being irretrievably ruined, and that we are constantly being asked to take all kinds of violent action, mostly of a foolish kind, but which is quite natural because these people are in desperate straits and consequently in a desperate frame of mind? If we criticise the Minister here, it is because we cannot help having some feeling for decent, honest industrious men, who have worked hard all their lives and who now, through no fault of their own, see themselves on the verge of ruin as a result of the Government's policy. I think that the Minister should make a little allowance for this instead of accusing us of lack of patriotism and sabotage.
Indeed it is rather curious that he should accuse us of sabotage or of taking any line, no matter how unpatriotic so long as it is likely to injure the Government, in view of the fact that it is only a few days ago since we had attacks on us from the Cumann na nGaedheal Benches accusing us of quite a different kind of thing—of having developed a special technique to keep the Government in office by voting with the Government whenever we saw the Labour Party voting against them. It seems to me that of these two accusations the one ought to cancel out the other. Would it not be wiser and fairer to take the straightforward view that when we vote in a particular way we do so because we think it right? If we wanted to sabotage the Government we could do it very easily by joining in any attacks on them originated by the Labour Party and we could do it without any risk to ourselves because we should be held up then as the friends of the poor and the oppressed and there would be no danger of being accused of lack of patriotism. The real truth of the matter is that we have our principles and we intend to stick to them no matter how much we are abused by people on either side of the House.
The Minister spoke to us last night about his plans with regard to foreign markets. I do not want to throw cold water on any efforts that he is making to find foreign markets and, if there were no economic war at all, it would be his duty to try to find as many outlets for Irish products as he possibly could. If, however, by his talk of foreign markets, he intends to imply that he can find anywhere within reach a country comparable to Great Britain as a market for agricultural produce, he is simply deceiving the nation. It is absurd to suggest that there is available anywhere a market where you have the relationship between area of territory and population that you have in England. Whatever success the Minister may have with his European markets, it certainly will not reach the point of providing anything approaching a substitute for the British market and, no matter what he says about the decline of the British market, there is not the slightest doubt that it is, and long will be, the best market in the world for imported agricultural produce, and it would have been a better market still if this Government had done its duty at Ottawa and had succeeded in joining forces with the British farmers and the Northern Ireland farmers to keep out foreign produce and get as much of a monopoly as possible in the British market for home-grown produce.
The Minister tells us now that he has a plan for foreign markets. He will not tell us anything about it. It is a deep and dark secret, because he has such a low opinion of our patriotism. Unfortunately, however, there are precedents which make us suspicious. We cannot help remembering that the Fianna Fáil Government had a plan all ready for curing unemployment in a year. They had a plan all ready for reducing taxation by £2,000,000 a year. They have never disclosed these plans, and they are not disclosing them now, I suppose, because of the suspicion that their opponents might sabotage their plans. They have never disclosed them, and certainly the plans are not in operation, and all this justifies us in being a little cynical about the plans for foreign markets to which the Minister alludes. A week ago I asked him had he a plan for saving the horse-breeding industry. He said he had. I asked him for an indication of what its nature would be. He would not give an indication—again afraid of sabotage, I suppose. We cannot help getting a little tired of all these mysterious plans that cannot be disclosed. During the famous wave of speculation associated with the South Sea Bubble in the 18th century, there was a company floated whose shares were offered for public subscription and, I believe, subscribed for by large numbers. The purpose for which this company was floated was described as being for "an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is." That strikes me as on a par with these indications of the Minister for Agriculture with regard to these famous plans of his.
I am not going to hash up again— I dare say that the Ceann Comhairle would prevent me if I wanted to do so—all the arguments about the economic war that have been drawn into this debate on the Agricultural Estimate, but I think I must answer one point made by the Minister. The Minister insists that the present situation has been brought about merely because the Government stood up for our rights in the way that was inevitable for them to stand up for our rights. On one of the first occasions on which I had the honour of addressing this House I pointed out that it was not always a good thing to be too preoccupied with standing up for one's rights; that bankruptcy courts and lunatic asylums were generally recruited from people who had been too tenacious and too pig-headed in thinking about their rights rather than their opportunities. My complaint with regard to the Government, and with regard to its handling of this whole financial dispute, is that it approached it in that sort of spirit, instead of in a businesslike manner. Anyone who suggests that the attitude of the Opposition, or at any rate—it is not for me to speak for the Cumann no nGaedheal Party—anybody who suggests that the attitude of the Centre Party towards the whole of this financial dispute with England is one of suggesting that we should make no attempt to obtain better financial terms from England is simply talking nonsense. The whole burden of our criticism of the Government is that they have handled the question in a way which was bound to lead to trouble, and could not lead to any good results.
The Minister referred to the fact that arbitration had been offered, or rather that the offer of arbitration had been accepted, because the offer did in the first instance come from the other side, provided that a non-Empire tribunal was appointed. That is true. Even so, that offer of arbitration, that acceptance of the principle of arbitration on our part, is a less business-like course and likely to lead to less good results than the course that might have been adopted. After all, if we had succeeded in our point, if we still succeed in our point of getting a non-Empire tribunal to conduct the arbitration, the result would be that if we are defeated, if it is established by the tribunal that the annuities were due and that the Cosgrave agreements were valid, or if either of those things is established by the tribunal, we shall be obliged to pay up in full. Having been so extremely litigious and so stubborn we could not reasonably expect the British to be in a hurry to make a considerable remission in respect to those sums. I think it would have been far more businesslike, and still would be far more businesslike, to stop all these litigious methods in handling the matter, and try to arrive at a settlement by means of making a definite cash offer with a view to putting an end to the whole dispute.
