Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 11 Jul 1933

Vol. 48 No. 16

In Committee on Finance. - Vote No. 25—Supplementary Agricultural Grants.

Mr. MacEntee

I move:

Go ndeontar suim ná raghaidh thar £450,489 chun slánuithe na suime is gá chun íoctha an Mhuirir a thiocfaidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh lá de Mhárta, 1934, chun an Deontas Talmhaíochta do mhéadú (Uimh. 35 de 1925 agus Uimh. 28 de 1931).

That a sum not exceeding £450,489 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1934, to increase the Agricultural Grant (No. 35 of 1925 and No. 28 of 1931).

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney

I think this is a very lamentable estimate which comes before the House. I am not surprised that in introducing it the Minister was very brief. There is nothing that the Minister could say in his own behalf on the Estimate.

Mr. MacEntee

Nothing is necessary.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney

I dare say it was right of the Minister to keep very quiet. This agricultural grant, as it stands this year, is one of the most serious Votes which we have to debate in the House. The grant, cut down as it has been this year by £448,000, is causing very grave inconvenience, to say the very least of it, to the agricultural community. Something less than two years ago, when things were nothing like as pressing on the agricultural community as they are at present, the last Administration considered it necessary that the agricultural grant should be increased by £750,000. At that time the present Minister and his Party were very strong that this sum of £750,000 was not at all sufficient, that it should be much greater. The needs of the ratepayers were such and their condition then was such that it was necessary that a much larger sum than £750,000 should be made available for the relief of the agricultural ratepayers, and they suggested £1,000,000. In last year's Budget the Minister increased the £750,000 to £1,000,000. This year we find, however, that there has been a going back upon that policy, that while they may have kept their promise to make £1,000,000 available it was a mere keeping of the promise in form, because when it is said that there is going to be a grant in aid of the rates of £1,000,000 that does not mean that it is a grant for one particular year or for one particular season. It is taken by everyone in the country to be a permanent condition of affairs, a lasting policy on the part of the Executive Council. I am going to leave out now, because I think, sir, you would probaly rule them as irrelevant, such matters as promises which were made that entire relief of rates would be given. I do not deal with that particular undertaking given by the present Administration. I do, however, deal with this undertaking: that the agricultural grant was to remain precisely as it was, and we now discover that it is being cut down by £448,000. That is the policy of the present Administration, that instead of assisting the ratepayers who are agriculturists by a grant equal to last year's, at any rate, they are going to have this very large sum indeed added to their rates.

There has been a cutting down of the agricultural grant. One would naturally say that the grant has been cut down because the needs of the people are less; that the people are in a condition now to pay higher rates than last year, because they are in a better condition. That is what one would expect. That seems to me, at any rate, to be the only justification which the Government could put forward. But, that is completely and entirely at variance with the known facts of the situation. I am not in any way exaggerating, I am putting the case, I think, very temperately indeed, when I say that at present Irish agriculture is passing through a worse time, and Irish farmers, especially small farmers, are at present in a condition worse than they have been since what used to be known as the bad times—since 1879 and 1880. In this particular year, when it is impossible for the ordinary farmer to get ready money to supply himself and his family with the necessities of life, the Government comes along and says: "In addition to the other burdens which we have put upon your shoulders this year by our policy we are going to place something heavier on your back, in case you have not a heavy enough load upon your back; we are going to put this extra sum of rates upon you."

There is more than that in this. This is not an ordinary year for rates. All over the country rates must increase. It is within the knowledge of every country Deputy, and if it is not within the knowledge of the Executive Council, then it is because the Executive Council are deliberately closing their ears and shutting their eyes, refusing to hear what they do not like, and to see what they do not care to see, that the number of persons going upon home assistance is vastly greater than it has been.

I know in my own constituency that that is so, and I know it is worse in other constituencies. I know there are people at the present moment looking and fighting for home assistance who a few years ago would have considered it the greatest possible degradation to them that they had to go and receive charitable assistance. After all our people were a proud people. Individually they were a proud people, proud men and proud women. They were anxious to earn their own livelihood by their own hands, and they hated any single neighbour of theirs to think that they had been forced to go on outdoor relief. Indeed that spirit may have gone a little too far. There may have been people that really ought to have received outdoor relief in other years who refused to accept it, but it was a manifestation of a fine manly spirit in our people. The policy of the Government is fast breaking down that manly spirit and that manly feeling. I do think that, when the history of those last two years comes to be written, every historian of this country will agree that it has not been so much the material injury that this Government has done to the people of this State that really counts, terrible as that material injury has been. What will be laid most at the Government's door is the demoralisation which they have brought upon the people of this State. Now it has ceased to be, as one knows, anything to be ashamed of, or anything that one wishes to keep hidden from one's neighbours, all over the country, that one is receiving home assistance. The old proud spirit is broken. The number of persons who are going upon home assistance all over the State is increasing daily, and during this coming winter it will increase more and more. In consequence of that, the rates in every single county of this State will have to be enormously increased during the coming year. Supplementary estimates, and borrowing from their treasurers, will have to be the policy of our county councils, or else there will be poverty, amounting in certain cases to starvation, to be endured by the necessitous in the country.

This year anybody looking forward when those Estimates were framed must have foreseen and must have known that there would be this increase in Home Assistance, and that the rates would press more heavily upon the people this year than last year, or in any year since the Irish Free State was established. The Minister must have had that knowledge, because everybody else in the State had that knowledge, and because from these benches the Minister was again and again warned of the state of affairs which he and his Government were producing in this country. He must have foreseen that the rates would be heavier this year, and that the ratepayers would be in a worse condition this year to pay them, and yet this is the year in which the Minister thinks it right and proper that the burden on the poor rate should not be lessened by the ordinary assistance which the Government gave in other years to the ratepayer. If there is one policy which it seems to me this Government should pursue during the present state of affairs it is to lessen the burdens upon the agricultural ratepayer and upon the agricultural community, and to make the things which are necessaries of life available to the ordinary ratepayer as cheaply as possible. Every single thing that this Government has done, this deliberate attack which the Government is making upon the really poor people of this country, every single bit of its policy is going to increase the amount of Home Assistance that will be required.

I am not going through the whole of the Government policy, nor pointing out how the Government policy is going to make the increase on rates higher than in any other year, but I will just point out one particular item of Government policy which must have its reaction upon the amount of Home Assistance which will be required in this State. The main staple food of the poor people in this State, especially during the summer months, must be flour. If you have dear flour, then you are going to have more people in receipt of Home Assistance than if you had flour at a cheaper price.

What is the effect of the Government's policy upon flour? It is that the price of flour is 50 per cent. higher in this State than it is in Northern Ireland. In other words you will buy three bags of flour in Northern Ireland for the price of two bags of flour here in this State. If you continue a policy of that nature it must drive under water the persons who are barely able to keep their heads above water at the moment. They must seek home assistance to keep them up. Therefore, when you have a general policy which is impoverishing the people on the one hand, and on the other hand is making the necessaries of life intolerably dear for the people, Home Assistance must increase enormously. That is the year in which the Government, instead of cutting down the amount of the agricultural grant, should sweep away the poor rate altogether by making an agricultural grant equal to the entire amount of the poor rate. Instead of taking the course which a sense of duty should have directed them to take in relief of the ratepayers of the State they have taken the very opposite course. Therefore, in my opinion at any rate, in introducing this Estimate they are most highly blameworthy.

Mr. MacDermot

Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney says that the Government has been guilty of a great injustice in reducing this Grant in present circumstances. They certainly have been: I thoroughly agree with him. He also, I gather, thinks that the reduction is going to cause great hardship upon the bulk of the ratepayers. I am not so certain of that, because I have the very gravest doubts as to whether the bulk of the ratepayers will pay their rates. I have said that here before, but I have always refused to advise people not to pay their rates. I invite the Minister to inform himself as regards that matter and to get the best evidence he can procure. I think the sooner he realises the truth the better. The great bulk of the ratepayers in this country will not be able to pay their rates during the current year. Consequently, I think the Minister will be called upon in the end to produce a very much larger estimate than is now before us.

Mr. Minch

I rise to oppose this Estimate. I want to oppose this reduction of £500,000 in the grant in rates to the agricultural community. The Minister is aware that the county homes are full; that the question of home help is one which is pressing severely on the county councils as a body and on the boards of health as their subsidiaries; that the situation is so appalling at the moment that the local bodies do not know how or where they are to get means to carry on. The county councils struck a rate, and at no time prior to the general election or prior to the rate being struck, was any indication given that there was going to be a deduction in the agricultural grant. It makes an appalling difference to any local authority to strike a rate and then to discover like the Kildare County Council, for instance, that £11,000 was to be taken off them in the matter of the grant. When the House was heatedly discussing the £1,500,000 that was going to America in repayment of the Republican Loan, I indicated as far as I could, that this was not the time for money to go out of this country. We find when the agricultural community is almost prostrate with financial depression and financial stringency, that this is the time in which £500,000 is to be taken off them. I would have liked to have heard Deputy MacDermot refer to that a few nights ago. I would have liked to have heard Deputy Norton refer to it when deductions and the slashing and cutting of wages and all these other things that go with the present hardships and with the present conditions were being discussed.

We are sending away £1,500,000 for these Republican Bonds, and at the same time this £500,000 that should go as aid to the farmers is being withheld. This half a million grant is being deducted. In fact, it is like a reduction in medical aid and in hospital help to the soldiers who are fighting a hard battle. We hear talk about the economic war and about the soldiers in the front line trenches. We hear of depressed conditions all over the country, and here we are dealing with an Estimate which is cutting away and keeping away half a million of money from the farmers.

I repeat again that at no time was any indication given that this deduction was going to be made. When the county councils struck that rate they had no idea of the sort of encouragement and help the Government were about to offer them to collect the rates. The farmers are to march along in this great national war and the encouragement they get to do their job well is to be told by the Minister for Finance that, approximately, half a million of money is to be withheld from them. This time of financial stringency is not the time when the farmers should be treated in that way. No matter what the conditions are or what are the means of winning this war, no matter how long it is to last, we have the situation that instead of inspiring them with courage and pluck the Government is doing everything to demoralise the farmers and to knock the punch and the pluck out of them. The Government is knocking the fight out of them. The farmers are becoming demoralised more quickly and sooner than anybody here in the City of Dublin can realise.

Dr. O'Higgins

In discussing this particular Estimate I wonder in which mood is the Minister to-night—is it a mood of jubilation or a lachrymose mood? Within the last couple of months we have had the experience, every second week, of the Minister coming in here and one week telling us that the Revenue was never so buoyant; that the country was never so prosperous, and that there is money in plenty for all. We have him coming in the next week telling us that we are up against it; that we are in sight of the last penny and that except everyone tightens his belt and everyone lives a little bit closer the country cannot carry on. I presume it is the latter tune we will hear to-night. We are confronted with this Estimate this year in the face of the economic war; in a year when farmers are being robbed of their market; in a year when the prices of agricultural produce have fallen to rock bottom. That is the time that is chosen by the Government to reduce the agricultural grant by approximately £500,000. That action is being taken by a Government that just a few short months ago preached to the farmers that their policy was to reduce overhead charges on agriculture.

Now and then from the Government front benches we hear noisy arguments about mandates, about what the country voted for, and we hear references to the fact that the hands of the Government are tied because a certain policy was put before the country and that that policy obtained a majority vote. I submit that, more clearly than any other policy, what Fianna Fáil put before the country was the necessity for reducing overhead charges on agriculture, and I submit that if Fianna Fáil has a mandate for anything more than for any other thing, it is a mandate to reduce overhead charges on agricultural land. Yet to-night we have this Vote reducing the agricultural grant by £448,000. I should like to know what is the case made for that deduction. Why is this year chosen for it? Is it because there is a shortage of money? If the agricultural community in this country in this year is to be deprived of £500,000 because the money is not there, why was this particular year suggested to repay over £1,000,000 Internal Loan and to give a grant of £100,000 to the Irish Press? When that Bill was introduced we heard nothing about the shortage of money; we heard nothing about the difficulties in revenue and about the necessity of economies. But when it comes to the case of the ordinary Irish farmer his grant must be reduced by half.

As Deputy MacDermot said, the grant is to be reduced in a year when there is every indication that the rates are likely to go up. There is every stimulus from the Government itself to increase the rate of progress in building schemes. With this I think all parties agree, but every one of those schemes will necessitate an increase in rates. Every sewerage scheme and every scheme of water works will mean an increase in rates. There would be acute difficulty in getting in the agricultural rates this year if this grant had remained at the same figure as last year. Even with the grant as it stood last year I, for one, doubt if the agricultural rate or any considerable proportion of the agricultural rate, could have been collected. But here we have the Government halving the grant towards the relief of rates and expecting the rate to be paid. That, to my mind, is expecting the impossible. I should like to know, apropos of the singling out of the farmers for the reduction of their grants, exactly at what period in the history of this country did the farmers become the enemies of the country and the enemies of the people. We have every indication for the last two years that the greatest crime that could be committed in this country is for a farmer to make good, for a farmer to succeed in his business or for a farmer to extend his holding.

We have the farmers deliberately picked out for a little Fianna Fáil vendetta and the harder they work and the more successful they are, the more bitterly and harshly they are to receive the lash of the Fianna Fáil Government. At what stage in our history did the farmers become the enemies of the country? When did they become people to be treated as enemies, people to be robbed of their markets and the title to their land stolen from them, people to be deprived of anything in the way of a grant? Why is such a year, when the farmers are going through it more than any other class of the community, chosen for this particular action? It is easy enough to smile at a case made. It is very easy to smile at a taxpayers' burden if an individual does not pay taxes himself. It is very easy from an atmosphere such as this to make little of the plight of the farmer; but the fact of the matter is that, even with the grants they had heretofore, no farmer could carry on in the face of existing prices. When the Minister for Finance was looking for votes in County Dublin he was aware of that and the promise he and everyone of his comrades made was that it would be their policy to reduce the overhead charges on agriculture. That stared at us in black and white from every dead wall in the country. You got support for that; you got a majority vote behind that; you got a mandate for that and you should treat that mandate with the same kind of respect as you treat other so-called mandates.

This year, as I said, is likely to see a vastly increased rate. Destitution is increasing; unemployment is increasing; home help is doubling itself with every Board of Health in the country. Other expenditure is being increased. There is more and more of a call on the rates and the rates must go up. The capacity of the farmers to pay the rates has admittedly gone down very considerably and on top of that comes the proposal to reduce the grant which would relieve the rates—a proposal for which there can be no reasonable defence. This question has been discussed on many occasions under different headings in this House, but nobody from the Government Front Bench has ever yet attempted to make a case why, in this particular year, with things as they are, the farmer is better able to pay his rates than he was in recent years. I will be interested to hear what particular case the Minister for Finance is going to make. If he can make no other case let him, after last week's exhibition, keep away from the case of the shortage of money and the necessity for bolstering up the revenue. I would say, if the choice has to be taken, that it is far more important to bolster up the agricultural industry than it is to bolster up the finances of any political newspaper.

Mr. Holohan

I would like to enter a strong protest against the withdrawal of £448,000 from the agricultural grant. I do not believe there was any year in the last half a century when the withdrawal of such an amount could have such a disastrous effect on the farmers. The amount of money the Government expect to collect in the way of rates is, to my mind, far more than the farmers will be able to pay. To add to their burden comes this proposal of the withdrawal of almost half a million from the agricultural grant. There is bound to be great hardship if they have to meet even part of their obligations. The rates during the coming year will be increased to such an extent that no farmer will be able to pay them, with the result that local services will be carried on only under the greatest difficulty. Conditions were never so bad, and it is too much to expect the farming community to face a rate increased by 1/6 or 1/8 in the £. I am not one to advise the farmers to refuse to meet their liabilities, but I certainly am aware of existing conditions, and I am convinced that the farmers will not be able to pay their rates simply because they have not the money.

Mr. Nally

The reduction in the agricultural grant of £448,000 will mean that the ratepayers in Mayo will be placed in such a position that they will not be able to pay rent or rates. Up to the time Fianna Fáil came into power the people in Co. Mayo always paid their rent and rates promptly. Now, when £448,000 will be taken off the agricultural grant, the rate will be increased in Mayo by 1/9 in the £, and the result is that the farmers will pay neither rent nor rates, not because they do not want to pay them, but because they will not be able to pay them. All this is due to the policy of the Government. I do not want to discuss the economic policy, because that was thrashed out here time and again. The fact is that the people cannot sell cattle, sheep or pigs and, as far as butter is concerned, they can get no sale for that either. We all know what the farmers get for eggs at the moment. The result of the whole thing is that the Minister can count on the people in Mayo not paying their rent or rates because they have not the money.

Mr. Cosgrave

As the Estimate is presented, the reduction which takes place in the agricultural grant is in respect of £599,011 voted by the Dáil as far back as 1926. There is no interference with the additional supplementary agricultural grant of £750,000 voted for the first time in 1931, nor with the sum of £250,000 voted for the first time last year in pursuance of the policy which had been announced by the Government, which was then in Opposition, so that their supporters throughout the country can say that they did not reduce the £1,000,000 grant which they said was necessary for the assistance of agriculture in the difficult times through which we were passing. The form in which the Estimate is presented, as was mentioned by Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney, is that the Government cannot be taxed with having interfered with the £1,000,000 which they declared was necessary to relieve rates during the last year or two. They go back to 1926 to find a sum which was then voted and paid since to relieve the rates of agriculturists. One would imagine that in a case like this some examination would be made of how the economy of agriculture stands at the present moment, whether the prices of agricultural products, eggs, butter, poultry, pigs, cattle, sheep or horses which made up the revenue from which the wealth of agriculture is derived could stand this extra burden this year. It may be said that 1/4 in the £ is a small sum. That depends altogether upon the capacity of the person in question to meet it. Any examination which could be made of the results, or the fruits rather of the agricultural industry during the last 12 months would show any reasonable-minded person that the farming community could not afford such a reduction.

In the case of those particular holdings where employment is given, and where perhaps the loss during the last few months may be relatively greater than in the smaller holdings, employment must suffer. It is not good policy, in a case like that, to interfere with any employment given. People who have a certain number of employees engaged regularly during the last few years dislike very much to have to let them go. But there is an inexorable law in connection with dealings of that kind in agriculture, as well as in other matters. If money is not there to meet the outgoings there must be some economic effort in order to enable one to pay his way. It is in that connection, I think, the greater mistake is made by the Government in selecting this particular year for such a huge reduction.

The Press accounts of the number of persons in receipt of home assistance show a remarkable increase for the last year. It could not be but that there would be an increase. We cannot afford such a big drop in the exports of agricultural produce and consequently in sales effected in this country. In the case of exports the figures are at once discernible, but in the case of goods sold in the country one is afforded no opportunity of estimating what the loss in revenue from agriculture is at this particular time. This year the Department of Agriculture sent out some messages to the farmers drawing their attention to the necessity for buying manures. Less manures were bought this year than in other years. The result of that policy means less production, and, consequently, less capacity to meet the additional burdens or to meet the burdens involved in all the circumstances of the case. The Minister for Agriculture, in addressing himself to the subject of farming the other day, said that if the farmer dealing with purposes other than his own, is in any way unable to make farming pay they were providing other means; they would give them bonds which would earn money, and that would relieve them of the holding of their farms. He went on to say in Claremorris on 9th June that the Government were well aware of the difficulties of the times; that the farmers were hard pressed; that labourers found it difficult to get employment; that shopkeepers found it hard to collect their debts. The same Minister, as a member of the Executive Council, is collectively responsible with other Ministers for this reduction in this relief which ought to go and which should go to the farmers of the country and which they are legally and morally entitled to get.

Reference has been made to the Bill which passed through the Dáil last week. The Minister will probably say that the sum for which this country is liable under that measure will be a funded amount; it will not be paid in this year. The cash will be paid probably, but the liability will be spread over a number of years. That is not the point. The point is, in all the circumstances, if one were to consider the question of charity, whether those at home are not deserving of our charity as well as those who are abroad. We have not been asked for this particular money in this year. It is a question of being called upon to pay, and we are prepared to bear our responsibility in that connection. But if our main industry this particular year is not in a condition to bear, and does not want such a huge impost being placed upon it, then I think we are entitled in honour and morality and in Christian charity to take into consideration the difficulties of the times. And the times were never more difficult than at the present moment.

The Minister does not lightly get up in the West of Ireland and say: "We know anyway of the conditions of affairs in the country." Even if last March or April it was thought that this particular saving had to be effected this year, now, in the changed circumstances of the times, the Executive Council should consider those changed circumstances.

Speaking in this place, some four or five weeks ago, the Minister for Agriculture read out a question which had been put to the Minister for Agriculture in Great Britain regarding the prices of fat cattle, and the price was down by something like 9/- per cwt. on last year. The Minister is, no doubt, aware that the price of fat cattle is down here in this country by much more than 9/-, possibly 20/-, on last year, and cattle are the principal products of our agriculture. There were times when the export of cattle from this country amounted to much more than one-third of our agricultural exports, and consequently, taking the average one should expect that form of export accounted for more than one-third of the revenue from agriculture. If the price be down so much as that, surely that is a consideration that the Minister ought to bring to bear upon the Executive Council in assuring them that agriculture at the present moment is unequal to the present rates and the other expenditure and outgoings it has to meet. The rates this year are higher, generally speaking, than last year, and they are higher by reason of the fact that there is greater need for assisting people in their homes than there was this time 12 months. The difficulty of collection will, no doubt, arise during the year. I hope not. I hope there will be better times and better prices and greater profits and greater ease in the discharge of those obligations and others than we have had experience of in the last 12 months. But we cannot live entirely upon hopes. We ought to be able to see some possible change before being able to do so. The Government are in the best possible position to examine all these real necessities of the farmers and to help them by restoring the agricultural grant to what it was last year.

Mr. Belton

Dealing with this matter I would like, if possible, that the few deluded farmers and farm labourers of County Dublin that voted for the Minister for Finance at the last election were here to see his indifferent sneer when the last speaker was addressing the House. The time will come, and perhaps it may not be long, when he will have to face the realities, not of his previous tub-thumping at the crossroads of County Dublin, but to face a maddened and deluded electorate whose suffrage he got at the last election by false promises. I, as a farmer here, do not get up to speak for a dole for farmers. Properly speaking, I believe that farmers have got too many doles or are expecting too many doles. They should get fair play and a free market—a reward for their labour—and the man who does not work let him get out. When I say that I mean it, and I hope, if there is one farmer with honesty and intelligence on the opposite benches, that he will get up and make a case for Government policy. Let him tell this House how a farmer can make his business pay at the present time and pay any wage. I am not the type of farmer that looks across a ranch with field glasses. I did my apprenticeship at the handles of a plough. There is no work on land that I did not do, and I did not look to the Land Commission or to anyone else to give me a farm. I went into the open market to buy a farm and I bought it with the money I earned myself. I have more land under the plough probably than any farmer in the Free State and I pay as high wages, if not higher wages, than any farmer in the Free State. I know the farmers had to sell early potatoes last Saturday at £4 a ton. I am sorry that the Labour Benches are empty with the exception of one solitary occupant. They are the people who are responsible for the reduction of wages in this country—the Labour Party who allied themselves to Fianna Fáil and to the Fianna Fáil Government policy for the last year and a half, which, inevitably, led to the reduction of wages and to the ultimate bankruptcy of this country. When this policy was adopted about a year ago, we had the Deputy Minister for Agriculture getting up in this House and saying: "Now we will have cheap food." But he produced no food. We had another Minister getting up and saying: "We are going to make this an industrial country." He said that at the same time that the market for industry is deprived of its purchasing power and our export market cut away.

I will give a classical example of a case put to me over the week-end by a farmer down the country. He said:—"I had a number of lambs, and last week a butcher from the town"—and I am glad that there is a Deputy here from near that town, and when I mention the name of the town I invite him to contradict me; that town is the town of Longford. "The butcher from the town came out, and out of a number of lambs he selected ten and he gave me £7 for them. I bought a new mowing-machine this year—a Pierce—and I gave £21 for it. Two years ago I could buy that mowing-machine for about the same price, if not cheaper, but I got £2 apiece for my lambs. It would be as cheap two years ago for me to give £60 for a mowing-machine as it is to give £21 to-day. In other words, the manufactured article that I could buy with about ten lambs three years ago I have to give 21 lambs for it now." That is the position into which the main industry of the country has been brought. There is no reduction in the price of the manufactured goods, and who is to buy the manufactured goods? I was in Ennis three or four weeks ago when a manufacturer there at a public meeting stated:—"There is no trouble in parting with goods but there is terrible trouble in getting paid for them." The money is not in the country, and the Government is choosing this time to reduce what was not a grant but what, in equity, belonged to agriculture. This is being done in an agricultural country by a Party that boasted, before the last Election, that it had 25 or 40 farmer Deputies but which did not consider that one of these farmer Deputies in this agricultural country was fit to occupy a position on the Front Bench. That is what Fianna Fáil thinks of the farmers and of the farmer Deputies who were elected to this Party by a machine.

At this time, when our market has been taken from us, we are up against a situation in agriculture which should be met by a Government that, if it had the competency and the honesty to do so, should have met it; but, instead, it has broken its promises—promises made by the Minister for Finance on the 15th August, 1931, in the town of Monaghan, with President de Valera standing on the platform with him, and the Parliamentary Secretary, Dr. Ward, also with him—promises made by the Minister for Education in a series of letters in the "Carlow Nationalist" in 1930 and 1931 to derate agricultural land, without a single word of depriving agriculture of its market. They are getting certain farmers around the country, many of whom I know have forgotten when they paid the last annuities or rates, saying that half the annuities are better than the remission of the whole of the rates. We have a fictitious Farmers' Organisation promoted by a barrister and an R.I.C. pensioner, and every week they have something in the daily Press about the farmers' position. They get columns in the Irish Press, and they send out this dope to all the provincial Press, in the name of the farmers, mar eadh, and that Farmers' Organisation has been promoted by the Ministers. It was first established by the Minister for Industry and Commerce when he was Deputy Lemass. What is the position to which agriculture has been brought by the present Administration? I hope the Minister when replying will not work himself into the usual hysteria, but that he will answer a straight question in a straight, calm way.

Mr. MacEntee

Like the Deputy.

Mr. Belton

Like the Deputy. There is no sign of hysteria about the Deputy now.

Mr. MacEntee

Now!

Mr. Belton

There would be very little hysteria about the Minister if he was looking for his income from the produce of the plough. There would be very little floating into the clouds by the Front Bench opposite if, instead of the Bar, the stethoscope, and the high falutin nonsense appealing to the imagination of the youth, to make a living out of politics, out of law, or out of medicine, they had to go and work agriculture in this agricultural country themselves. They would then know how to govern us. But men who have never turned a shilling in agriculture do not know how to manage an agricultural business, and the government of this country is a first-class agricultural business. At present there is no danger of any farmer working himself into hysteria, except the hysteria of despair, and many of them would be excused for working themselves into that hysteria if they saw the antics of the Ministers in this House and of the "yes" men behind them. When, with a flourish of trumpets, we were told that the Government would not pay tribute to England in the shape of the land annuities, they promised the country unequivocally that from that date all that money would be used for the benefit of agriculture by derating agriculture. I challenge any Deputy or Minister on the opposite benches to contradict that statement. Some of them went as far as to say that no annuities would be paid. What happened? When the Government refused to pay the annuities the British Government started collecting them and are collecting them still. They are collecting them from the agricultural produce sent over to England. The British Government are getting these annuities and the farmer is paying more than the annuities. He is paying £2,000,000 more than the annuities. He is paying more than his annuity and his rates put together. What did the Minister for Finance do? He collected the taxation to build up the £2,000,000 that went to pay the British Government for local loans and pensions, and that was put into a Suspense Account. The land annuities were also put into the Suspense Account and he had then close on £5,000,000. That money was normally to pay a debt that the farmer had to pay through the tariffs which England imposed.

When the farmer paid that debt to England which was a Government liability, that money in the Suspense Account that the Government held should go of right to the benefit of agriculture and to meet the entire annuities and rates on agricultural land. But it did not. The Minister and his colleagues are either so stupid or dishonest that they go to the country and tell the people: "We are going to give you relief of half the annuities," while the people are already paying twice the annuities to England.

Then there is another sleight-of-hand trick of the Minister since his Party came into office. I went over in detail on another matter last week the history of the agricultural grant. I am not going to go over it in such detail now, although it might be no harm to teach the Minister something he does not know. That smile that just beamed across his lovely face if it appeared in the Drogheda Independent or the Leinster Leader would be worth a terrible lot in election times, but not to the Minister. Originally, the agricultural grant was a right of tenancy that our predecessors in the occupation of the land made with the landlords. The original agricultural grant was a burden which the Government of the day took on itself to meet what was hitherto a landlord's liability. It was standardised by the Local Government Act of 1898 at half the rates for that year.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

That is very far back. Could we come to the supplementary agricultural grant that we should be discussing now?

Mr. Belton

I want to show the inequality of treatment. However, we will leave that and come to more recent times. We will come to the abstentionist period of the Minister and his Party, which was the forerunner of the present abstention from the Dublin Corporation. When people acquire bad habits, it is hard for them to get out of them. The time will come, however, when they will be taught good habits, and that time is fast approaching. The way to win a fight is not to run away from it, and the Minister has been an adept at running away.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The way to discuss this Estimate is to discuss the supplementary agricultural grant.

Mr. Belton

In 1931 I heard the Minister in this House become furiously eloquent over the condition of agriculture. Nothing short of one million pounds immediate relief to agriculture could save agriculture from ruin then. £750,000 was given by the late Minister for Finance. That was given by the imposition of taxes. When the Minister took office in 1932, with a flourish as to what he was doing for agriculture, he increased it by £250,000. How did he increase it? The previous year those taxes that were imposed to give £750,000 were only producing for nine or ten months, and they only produced roughly about £750,000 or £800,000. In the natural course of events those taxes would be producing over one million pounds the following year; that is in a complete 12 months. The product of those taxes would give a million for the agricultural grant and leave a little residue with the Exchequer as well. So that all the Minister did was to give the same grant as his predecessor had given, plus the extra two or three months' produce of the taxation imposed by his predecessor to help agriculture. Although the Minister this year reduces the agricultural grant by £448,000, he has not reduced that taxation that was imposed to give £750,000 in nine months, and which would produce over one million pounds in the 12 months. The taxation remains, and the grandiose schemes of the Minister when out of office to relieve agriculture have disappeared, just as his plan to reduce national taxation by two million pounds has disappeared. This is a period of stress for the main industry of the country, when the value of arable land and the value of all crops has been reduced for want of a market. It might be interesting to tell the Minister that despite the tariffs on feeding stuffs, and despite this admixture of grain which was going to give us inflated prices for corn, good oats is unsaleable now at 7/6 a barrel. We were told a couple of weeks ago here: "Look at England. Look at Scotland—8/6 and 9/- a barrel for oats." At 7/6 a barrel it cannot be sold here now. If the Minister or his colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, can tell us where there is a market now I will deliver to him in the next four weeks 400 tons of potatoes at £4 a ton. Can he tell me where there is a market? He cannot, because he has ruined the market. With pig-feeding potatoes I will have to do the same as I did last year—throw them in the ditch. I have been employing men who went out and voted for the Minister, and he has taken the bread off my men's table by his policy. The agricultural labourers in County Dublin were fooled by the Minister and his satellites with wild promises that never fructified. He has taken the bread off their table by his policy. Let him name a market for potatoes now, and we in County Dublin will glut that market.

Mr. S. Flynn

Will the Deputy tell the House what price potatoes are in the North of Ireland, where they have the whole British market to themselves?

Mr. Belton

What is the Deputy talking about now? What period? Will the Deputy put a time, a place and a quality on the potato and I will talk to him. This should be as serious a matter for the Deputies opposite as it is for us. Whether they are farmers or not they represent farmer constituents here. There is not a Deputy in this House who does not, to a greater or lesser extent, represent agricultural constituents, and it is not a laughing matter for any Deputy in this House.

Mr. Jordan

That is true.

Mr. Flynn

If the Deputy will go to Enniskillen he will see people from the Free State buying cattle at the fair there. Then they talk about the price in the British market!

Mr. Belton

Am I to understand from the Deputy that people from the Free State went into the Six Counties to buy store cattle?

Mr. Flynn

Yes, that happened.

Mr. Belton

I am afraid the Deputy has wakened out of a dream.

Mr. Flynn

Do you think so? If you go down to the Six Counties you will wake out of your dream.

Mr. Belton

How many fortunes have been made by people from the Twenty-Six Counties smuggling cattle into the Six Counties?

Mr. Flynn

But to the town of Enniskillen a man went down from Dromahair——

Mr. Belton

I can tell the Deputy the name of a man who last week bought two two-year-old cattle at £6, —£3 a head, a price that would be paid for them two years ago when they were dropped calves.

Mr. Smith

They must have been smoking tobacco.

Mr. Belton

While prices are so low and while wages are unobtainable in agriculture, we have Deputies and Ministers of the Government going out and saying: "We know people who have reduced wages since this Government came in, and we will know how to deal with them." I have reduced them, and I invite the Front Bench to deal with me. I reduced them, and I will reduce them further, because the price I can pay my men is regulated by the price I get in the market, and that market price has been regulated by the Minister. It is time that the working man used a little intelligence, and put his finger on the sore spot. If we in this country do not make up our minds to put people on the Front Bench who have run a business and run it successfully in this country we are going to run this country on the rocks. People who never handled business cannot handle the intricate and important business of governing this country. I wonder has all this been a studied plan to reduce the value of land so that they can come along with a confiscatory Bill when the market prices of land are reduced to nothing, or is it incompetence? It must be either incompetence or a deliberate policy to ruin the country. We were rushed into an alleged war which took from us our market, and we have never been told without equivocation what the issues in that war are. Any man with commonsense objects to being dragged along at the chariot wheels of President de Valera. When he puts on his hat his house is thatched and if he took a handbag and left this country in the morning it would not cost him a penny. For people who have to live their lives in the country it is a very different matter.

The Front Bench opposite asks what is going to happen to the 25,000 or 30,000 men and women that every year are coming to the age of manhood and womanhood. What is going to happen to them? No matter what they will turn their hands to they cannot make it pay. What is to happen to them? For fear they would get anything out of it, the relief that was considered necessary for agriculture before the market was lost has now been taken away by the Government, the members of which urged that relief was necessary before the market was lost. And what have they substituted for it? They raided the fund and they took £2,000,000 or £3,000,000 out of it and they went out and made paupers of the small farmers and their sons throughout the country in order to win an election. They made the farmer and his sons who never registered at a labour exchange go and register there, and they worked there during the general election——

Mr. MacEntee

On a point of order.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Surely the Deputy is travelling far away from the Estimate. I suggest he tell us something about the Estimate. The Deputy has travelled to everything outside the Estimate. We are dealing with this Estimate. I suggest he tell us something about it now.

Mr. Belton

But, A Leas-Chinn Comhairle, you know the Government's excuse for everything when they have no answer to it.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I know the Deputy is relating this back, but I suggest that the registration of farmers at labour exchanges is a little difficult to relate to this Vote.

Mr. Belton

You know the Government's authority for everything they have done and are doing, is "we were elected," but this is the way in which they were elected, they got the farmers and the farmers' sons to register.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

But I am not interested in that.

Mr. Belton

They claim a victory, but on balance they got only 50 per cent. of the seats that were contested. They got only 76 seats out of 152 contested.

Mr. Smith

And then look at the kind of Deputies they got.

Mr. Jordan

And thanks be to God, look at the kind of Deputies we did not get.

Mr. Belton

Oh, but see what some of them did for you.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Belton will have to come to the Vote now.

Mr. Belton

The agricultural grant totalling £1,750,000 for the current year is entirely inadequate to meet the situation. The result will be when the sheriff and the Guards and, perhaps, the military go round that no rates will be paid at all. They will not be paid because the money is not there to pay them. We had an examination of our rate collectors in the County Dublin just before the close of our financial year. One rate collector said: "I went to a farmer who owed me about £30 in rates, and what do you think he told me? He said ‘There are three bullocks there and you can take them for the rates.'" I asked the rate collector: "Did you take them?" and he said, "no, what good are they to me?" I then said: "What good are they to the farmer? He can only pay the rates by cashing these bullocks, and as you cannot cash them, how is the farmer to cash them?" How is the farmer to give money to the county councils if he cannot cash his stock? The Minister and the Government will find that the greatest empty formula they ever struck was the mandamus order they made against us.

Mr. MacEntee

Is this in order?

Mr. Belton

I am dealing with the rates——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy is not going to drag everything into this debate. He has dragged in the economic war, the Dublin Corporation, the employment exchanges. What else does he seek to drag in?

Mr. Smith

We will get the costs anyway.

Mr. Belton

Does not the whole question of the adequacy or otherwise of the Supplementary Agricultural Grant hinge on the agricultural ratepayers' capacity to pay?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

How does that arise on a particular mandamus order against Deputy Belton?

Mr. Belton

Because the mandamus order was to get us to strike a rate that we know agriculture is not able to pay.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

This Estimate must be discussed on a general application, and not on its particular application.

Mr. Belton

I submit that what applies to agriculture in Dublin applies with greater force to the rest of the country, because agriculturists in Dublin, being near the market here, can cash most commodities even though the cash is not adequate. We can turn our produce into some sort of money, but down the country the farmers cannot turn their stock or produce into any sort of money. If it is impossible to find rates in the County Dublin, the position is ten times more impossible down the country. It is ten times more difficult to find the rates there. The ability of the farmers to pay is the test of the whole situation. On the admission of the Deputies opposite, with a good market, with higher prices, with lower rates and the same annuities, with general world conditions for agricultural produce slightly better than they are now, the farmers could not pay. A depreciated world market, reduced by a 40 per cent. tariff —a market for stock two years old and upwards almost annihilated because of the extra high tariff—makes it practically impossible to find money in the country. This is the time chosen by the Government to reduce the Agricultural Grant instead of giving the farmers what was definitely promised to them—complete de-rating. After causing a situation where the farmers have to pay their annuities twice, this is the time chosen by the Minister to reduce the grant.

I am sorry I have not here by me the circular which was addressed to the county councils by the Minister for Local Government and Public Health. In that circular he coolly stated that, owing to the other benefits given by the Government to the farmers in the last twelve months they could afford, in fact, a reduction in the Agricultural Grant, and that even after that reduction they would still be better off. I would like to hear the Minister for Finance in his best classical style dealing with that and showing how agriculture is better off now than when he and his colleagues took office. I heard it summed up this afternoon in this way by a farmer: he said the only way to raise the price of stock would be if a discriminating Providence last week in that thunderstorm had killed half the stock it would mean that we would not be one bob worse off. No farmer would be worse off because the price he would get for the remainder of the stock would be as much as he will now get for the whole of it. We are coming to the time when the only way of disposing of agricultural produce is to do what is done in America. There when they have a bumper crop of cotton or wheat they destroy portion of it so that they might get better prices for the remainder. This is what we are coming to here, because we have been deprived of our market at the other side 60 miles from these shores. We have been deprived of a market, not by foreigners, not by the Saxons, but by our own elected representatives—elected on false pretences——

Mr. MacEntee

On a point of order, what has this to do with the Vote?

Mr. Belton

I repeat we have been deprived of our markets, and it is at the very time when our markets are cut off that this Grant, which in justice should belong to the agricultural industry, is being taken away. It is taken away, and the excuse given in plain English is that we are better off than before when higher prices prevailed. In this House we do not get anything proved mathematically. There has been no attempt made to prove this. We get wild statements and platitudes. We want to get down to business. We want it shown and the country wants to be shown how we are better off now than when the present Government came into office.

It is said that we are playing England's game. I may tell you that some people will play the game they are at too long. They will be found out and there will be a terrible day of reckoning for it. People are not going to starve in this country. The working farmers who, through their industry, have built themselves up, are not going to be ruined at the whims of Ministers who never built themselves up in industry. It is time we faced facts and it is time that we called a spade a spade. It is time that Ministers disclosed their mentality as to whether they want to ruin this country or whether they do not. The Leas-Cheann Comhairle, I am afraid, is watching lest I should go back into ancient history.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I am afraid I cannot prevent the Deputy from going into very many by-ways.

Mr. Belton

I think the Deputy found something in every by-way he went into. A lot of things, too, have come out of the by-ways which have not been very pleasing to the Minister opposite.

Mr. Smith

He never came out himself.

Mr. Belton

I took you out of the by-ways and brought you in here and, mind you, when these Deputies came in here they were very glad to get whatever grant was coming to them. It was not reduced. If that little pin-money were not available to these Deputies——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy is now out of order.

Mr. Belton

——their farms would be very little good to them. After all the schemes we have had, everybody knows that agricultural produce in this country since we lost our markets does not pay the cost of production. Everybody who is not wilfully blind or wilfully stupid knows that. It is staring him in the face every day. Yet this is the time that is chosen for reducing grants. What case is there for reducing grants this year that cannot be urged with greater force next year, when the cumulative effect of this policy will be felt more acutely than it is to-day? Think, again, that you have 25,000 or 30,000 more looking for a living in this country because the foreign country is closed to them. No matter what they turn to, they cannot make a living. Any man who is reputed to be able to give a day's work, day after day, has to turn dozens away who are looking for work at any price.

I must say that I have to agree with the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance that they would take gladly 24/- or 21/- a week. They would take anything that would keep body and soul together if they could get it. That is the position to which we are reduced by the policy of the present Government. The labour market is such that the Union expenditure is going up week after week. The bottom is put out of the market; the purchasing power of the worker is diminishing and the price paid to the consumer must diminish accordingly. It all arises from the one source—bad administration and bad government. Next year we shall probably be discussing even a smaller estimate because there will be nothing left in the exchequer to pay an agricultural grant. Then perhaps we shall wake up.

Mr. A. Byrne

I desire to call the attention of the House to the fact that the Front Government Bench is entirely vacant. We have ten Ministers in the Government but there is not one of them present at the moment to reply to the Deputy.

Mr. Smith

Deputy Byrne has no right to speak at this stage.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

It is not a matter of order.

Mr. Belton

I want to state that there is no use in continuing to discuss the state of agriculture when the entire Front Government Bench is left vacant. It shows the interest they take in agriculture. It shows the contempt the Government have for the agricultural industry, for the farmers, the labourers and the shopkeepers who are making a living out of it. They reduced the agricultural grant at a time when the farmers were justifiably expecting that the Government would redeem their promises and give complete derating. I can claim to speak on behalf of agriculture as well as any man in the Free State. If I want to address an agricultural meeting in any county in the Free State—and I have addressed them in every county—I would get as large an audience as any other man in Ireland. Yet while I was dealing with the matter the whole Government Front Bench opposite was left vacant. I hope the Press, even the kept Press of the Government, will report that to-morrow and show the country the contempt which the Minister for Finance and the Government generally have for agricultural workers in this country.

Mr. MacEntee

The Deputy is a good judge of kept persons. In 1916——

Mr. Belton

I am not going to give way to the Minister. I know something that the Minister does not know. I am not going to give way to the Minister, the President or anybody else. Deputies have the same right in the House, whether they are in the Opposition or anywhere else.

Mr. Jordan

He was referring I believe to something that appeared in the "Herald" last week.

Mr. Belton

I refer to something that should appear in the "Press", my reply to their leading article last Saturday.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy will not be allowed to make charges against any institution, any press or any company in this fashion under the privileges of the House.

Mr. Belton

I am not dealing with the company; I was dealing with an organ of publicity.

Mr. MacEntee

May I point out that the Deputy is wasting time? He has needlessly repeated himself several times in the course of his speech.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I am carefully noting his speech. The Deputy has certainly repeated himself, both as regards the exact words and the meaning attached to other phrases which he used on several occasions. He has very nearly reached the limit of the Chair's patience.

Mr. Belton

I shall conclude. I shall conclude with the remark that the Front Bench of the Government was left vacant while this important discussion on agriculture was proceeding. I hope those who have the interests of agriculture at heart will not waste their breath discussing it any more seeing that the Government has shown that it has such contempt for agriculture.

Mr. McGovern

A great protest has been voiced because the amount of this grant is only £448,000. I hold it is not a question of £448,000. It is a question of obtaining complete justice for the farmers by giving them complete derating. This question of giving them grants is only like giving them a slice of justice instead of giving them complete justice. The question of the annuities and other matters can be dealt with on their own merits. In every other industry in this country, tariffs are imposed in order to enable the workers in the industry to produce at a price that will pay them and to give them a decent wage. With regard to agriculture, it is admitted, I think, even on the Government Benches, that agricultural produce is being produced under the cost of production. In these circumstances, it is impossible for farmers to pay a decent wage even where they employ their own family. They cannot afford a decent wage for the members of their own family, let alone men they employ and, if they do give them a living wage they cannot pay these overhead charges. Take, for instance, the position of the farmers in Northern Ireland. The world depression is such, at the present time, that the farmers of Northern Ireland, who are completely derated and who are getting the full price for their agricultural produce without any tariffs against the sale of that produce and without any tariffs on what they have to buy—with all these advantages— are, at present, unable to pay annuities and they have petitioned the Government of Northern Ireland to reduce their annuities by one half. The farmers of the Free State are selling their agricultural produce at a 40 per cent. reduction as compared with the Northern farmers and buying their requirements at a similarly increased cost as compared with that paid by the Northern farmers and, in addition, are paying an increased rate this year as compared with last year, while the farmers of Northern Ireland are completely derated. When all those things are taken into consideration, it is easy for the Government to see that it is impossible for the farmers to meet these charges.

Deputy Belton referred to the fact-I do not want to refer to the matter at any great length-that the farmers here are paying more than the annuity by reason of tariffs and by reason of the loss sustained by the dispute. Since they are paying more than the amount of the annuities, it is absolutely impossible for them to pay an increased rate or, in fact, any rate. Reference has been made to cattle coming in from Northern Ireland. I do not believe that there is a Deputy in this House who believes that there are cattle coming in from Northern Ireland.

Mr. S. Flynn

The cattle fair of Enniskillen on 10th June.

Mr. McGovern

A slip was cut out of a paper and sent to me a couple of days ago, in which certain gentlemen in England are given as saying that there has been an increase in the number of cattle sent from the Free State in three months of this year as compared with a similar period last year notwithstanding the tariffs. How can you have it both ways? If there are more cattle going out, how, then, would they be coming in? They are not sending cattle from Northern Ireland. I am living much nearer the Border than Deputy Flynn is and if he lived where I lived he would know the difference. I have been living there for a very long time and cattle were always coming up from Northern Ireland. I used to bring them up myself and sell them in the Free State, but there is no use in telling this House that there are cattle coming in from Northern Ireland now. In a few cases, they might come in but the cattle are going out and there are, at least, as many cattle being sold in Great Britain, after paying the tariff, as there would be if there were no tariff because they have no other market except in the case of the few hundred that go to Germany. There is no use in putting up an argument like that. I should like to ask the Minister for Agriculture, or the Minister for Finance, who represents him here this evening, to consider this matter because the farmers will not be able to pay. Even yet, we hope that something will be done to meet the situation and that this reduction in the agricultural grant will be reconsidered and something done to relieve the farmers. I do not see any hope of getting in this money because they are unable to pay it.

Professor O'Sullivan

This is a grant that goes to the local authorities in connection with agricultural rates. I wonder whether the Government has asked itself whether the authorities are in a position to meet the situation—I speak of the local authorities—which it has created by the diminution of this supplementary agricultural grant? The Government has been accused of not keeping one of its promises. That was in respect of complete derating. There is, of course, a great deal of truth in that particular accusation. It was honoured in the same way in which most of their promises have been honoured but, at least, they did one thing. When they were in opposition, they did increase one portion of the agricultural grant by £250,000. They might say, therefore, that they honoured a portion of their bond, and as it is one of the very few instances in which they went even that distance to honour a portion of their bond, they should, possibly, get credit for it, but it is a very characteristic way of doing it that, having added on that £250,000, they now proceed to deduct £450,000, roughly speaking, from another portion of the grant. I have no doubt that the subtle minds we sometimes hear on the Government Benches would be able to prove, mathematically and logically, that they fully honoured their bond so far as the relief of agricultural rating is concerned, but the Government ought to consider the situation in which the ordinary local authorities and county councils will find themselves in the coming 12 months. They have to budget or, at least, to levy rates without getting practically £500,000 on which they had counted. This affects everybody in the country. It affects not merely the farmer, who has to pay increased rates but, ultimately, it is likely to affect everybody who, in one way or another, comes into touch with the local administration. It is a matter for the Deputies of every Party in this House to ask themselves whether the farmer is in a position to pay the increased rates that become necessary as a result of this particular withdrawal of £450,000 by the Government.

That is the essence of a great deal of the charge that has been made against the Government. At any time, such a sudden imposition on the farming community would be serious. It is, as Deputies of every Party will recognise, particularly serious at the present moment, apart altogether from the economic war. It would have been a difficult situation owing to the general fall in agricultural prices but, as has been pointed out again and again, that general fall has been made catastrophic for our farmers by the incidence of the economic war and that, unfortunately, is the time when new burdens are put on the local authorities. The answer of the Government, again and again, has been to point out that they have come to the assistance of the local authorities in other ways, and they are coming to the assistance of the farmers in other ways. So far as local authorities are concerned, let us be quite clear that, in respect of relief from rates, the Government has in no way come to their assistance. It has induced them in various ways to embark on further expenditure—even the grants for building are inducements to further expenditure—and, therefore, further to increase rates. Those who are acquainted with some of the county councils in this country know perfectly well that that is a taking-on of a new liability by the county councils and other local authorities.

That is not an excuse in any way; it is rather an aggravation of the situation. It is not an excuse for the withdrawal of this relief which, up to some months ago, the local authorities had every right to expect they would enjoy this year. It is not merely now a question of the farmers who have to pay the increased rates. The farmers are not the only people affected in the various counties. If, as has been strongly urged by various public bodies, by people in touch with the farming community, the farmers will not be in a position, owing to the decline of the value of their produce and owing to the loss of their markets, to pay the increased rates, that is bound to affect everybody in the country, not merely those who pay rates, but those who gain benefits from the rates. Therefore, this action of the Government is directed against every section of the community that has anything to do with county councils.

Deputy Cosgrave quoted a Minister speaking in the West where he boasted that they were not unaware of the conditions in the country. Personally, I have often felt convinced that the one excuse they have for the policy they are pursuing is that they are not aware of the conditions existing. How is the the farmer to meet the increased rates that he is called upon to pay? That is a question that ought to be put to himself by every Deputy. The farmer has lost his markets. Has he got any others in exchange? It was hinted by the present Minister for Finance that there were prospects of markets. We were told definitely by the Minister for Agriculture within the last month that they had got the markets and we had the Minister for External Affairs, the President, this evening stating that our relations with other countries from the commercial point of view are most unsatisfactory. We have representatives abroad in different portions of Europe, but in not one of the countries in which we have representatives is there anything, according to the President, except a very unsatisfactory state of affairs so far as trade with these countries is concerned. Therefore, although we have the Minister for Agriculture telling us he has markets, the President tells us he will have to take very serious steps indeed unless these countries with which we now do a certain trade mend their hand and do more business with us.

Where have the markets vanished to within a month? How is the farmer to meet the additional burden, that, in this above all years, the Government has chosen to put upon his shoulders? On the one hand, by their policy the Government, deliberately or not—it is impossible, as one Deputy pointed out, in matters of this kind to make up one's mind as to how far the Government is deliberate and how far it is merely incompetent—are driving the local authorities into bankruptcy and, on the other hand, they have certainly done a great deal to drive those on whom the local authorities must depend for their revenue to bankruptcy as well. I suggest there is absolutely no justification for the line that is being taken by the Government, for the policy that is revealed in the Estimates. The farmers always had a difficult position to fill. That applies to all countries, not alone to the Free State. It is not easy in that particular industry to get the balance on the right side. That would be difficult under normal circumstances, but in the present circumstances it has become impossible. At the moment, the difference between the value of what the farmer sells and what he gets is very considerable.

The Government is treating a very serious matter with a flippancy that, I am sorry to say, we are now rather accustomed to get from some members, at any rate, of the Government Front Bench. It is nothing less than flippancy not to realise existing conditions and to pretend that the economic war has no effect whatsoever on the capacity of the farmer to pay his rates. It undoubtedly has. You must compare the average price of cattle in this country and in Great Britain. It is useless to tell fairy tales about an individual who wandered into a fair in Enniskillen. An individual happening like that, even if truly reported, has nothing to do with the situation. Whatever benefits there may have been from other aspects of Government policy— and I do not believe there have been many—we in Kerry certainly have got very little benefit from their wheat and grain-growing policy, except increased costs as we have to buy feeding stuffs and sell our farm produce outside. In that particular county the farmers have to meet their share of the Agricultural Grant.

We are now familiar with the Government's reply—that there is no satisfying the farmer. As one Minister put it, the farmers do not know how well off they are and how well they are being treated by the Fianna Fáil Government. They do not know all the good things that the Fianna Fáil Government has done for them. They do not know how, again and again, that beneficent and patriarchal Government has come to their assistance. Of course, it may diminish the annuities by one-half but, in reality, and it is necessary to insist upon this, it is no good to reduce land annuities by one-half and at the same time reduce the value of the land to one-fifth or less. That is the situation. You come to the assistance of the farmer by reducing what he has to pay in land annuities— that is the answer I heard when objection was taken to this step before —but as against all that the farmer now has to bear burdens he had not to bear before and he has not the wherewithal to meet these burdens. At any time, a step of this kind could only be described as retrogressive. The policy of the previous Government, and for a while, apparently, the policy of this Government, was a policy of coming to the assistance of the agricultural community by increasing the Agricultural Grant. Now a step is taken in the opposite direction by diminishing the Grant at a time when the farmer is least able to bear the charge. I move to report progress.

Progress reported, the Committee to sit again to-morrow.

The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 12th July.