This very large Supplementary Estimate has, to my mind, one peculiarly interesting aspect. It ought to bring home something to the country, and that is that after two years of Fianna Fáil administration every branch of agriculture in this country has become a mendicant depending on Government charity. Two years ago the farming industry was carried on by independent, self-supporting men, who had not to ask anyone to help them along. Times were admittedly hard, and world conditions were pressing heavily upon them, nevertheless, they were able to stand on their own feet and to make their own way. Fianna Fáil came to their rescue and the net result of Fianna Fáil activity is that every single branch of agriculture is now in receipt of outdoor relief in one form or another from the Government. Oats, bacon, cattle, eggs, pork, wheat, every branch of agriculture I could name is being carried on with the assistance of Government doles and grants. There is not a single self-supporting farmer living in the length and breadth of the land. Is not that something that a Minister for Agriculture might be proud of? It is bad enough for the farmers themselves, but the general effect that it is having on the morale of our people must be perfectly appalling. There are men running with their hats in their hands to every Government Department for relief—men who would never have dreamt of looking to a Government Department five or six years ago.
It is becoming a universal practice to expect the Government to keep you. It is common knowledge that nothing is more demoralising to a working man than to be for a protracted period employed on nothing but relief works. Every farmer in this country is in a position analogous to the working man working on relief works. They all know that in order to be able to carry on, they have to get doles or grants from the Government and they all know that if the Government would get out of their way and let them do their work, they would be able to get on without anything at all except the fruits of their own exertions. The Government first comes in and destroys their business and then turns them all into the bond slaves of whoever happens to be in office. That, to my mind, is the most striking element in this Supplementary Estimate. If that fundamental fact is not recognised and remembered, before very long a damage will be done to the fundamental industry of this country that our generation will be unable to repair. We all remember the Minister for Agriculture, on one occasion when I challenged him that his colleague was adding hordes of officials to the pay list of the Civil Service, replying "Yes, and I am doing it every day." He is; he is calling the tune and now he is beginning to ask us to pay the piper. £5,659 for additional personnel to the Civil Service—and that after it was found necessary to introduce legislation to reduce the salaries of civil servants only a few months ago. Having effected a saving on behalf of the State at the expense of existing civil servants, we are now going to spend that saving on new civil servants. As the President himself said, outside Bedlam was there ever greater insanity embarked upon?
Under sub-head E (3) we have an item tactfully described as "Subscriptions to International and other Research Organisations," but if you open the Estimate—and I do not want Deputy Corry to faint away when I read this out to him—you find that the "Other Organisations" are the Imperial Agricultural Bureau. If that is not high treason to the glorious principles of Fianna Fáil, I do not know what is. If that is not fighting England's battle, if it is not playing England's game, I do not know what is. Apparently, it has become fashionable to play England's game since President de Valera got involved in a little scrap up in South Down. He has discovered to his horror that, in the opinion of some of his fellow-countrymen, about whose welfare he is particularly solicitous when he has them locked up in Arbour Hill, he is playing England's game. It only shows you that that is a relative matter but it also only shows that it is a very convenient weapon with which to wallop your political opponent when it is convenient to do so. The weapon broke in the hands of President de Valera and his Party because the people of this country came to realise that it was a gross and dishonest libel, and what broke in his hand has been picked up by the I.R.A. to wallop him. I hope he will like it and I hope that he will rebut the charge levelled against him by the I.R.A. as effectively and as definitely as we rebutted it and destroyed it when it was levelled against us by the Fianna Fáil Party.
Under sub-head M (8) there is a token Vote. We all know what a token Vote means. A token vote usually means "The figure is so monstrous that I do not dare put it down and I am not going to tell anybody about it until I have the money spent and then, when the horse is gone, you can try to lock the stable door as much as you like—I do not care." This is to provide the dole that is made necessary for the tillage farmers of this country by the Fianna Fáil wheat policy. I often remember that Deputy Corry used to get up here and sing "Alleluia; the day of deliverance is at hand and at last, the industrious tillage farmer is going to come into his own. Now he will see the price he will get for barley and for oats." People would be clamouring at his gates to get the grain crop that he would raise, but by the Lord Harry, he discovered that when he had it raised, there was no one to buy it. His colleague, with great gallantry, I must say, took the field and the burden on to his own back and announced that he would fill the breach. But he is afraid to tell us what filling that breach is going to cost and in my opinion we will probably never know what filling that breach is going to cost, because when he comes to realise the situation that his policy is creating for the tillage farmers of this country, he will try to push up the oats content of the maize meal mixture and as he pushes up the oats content of the maize meal mixture and prescribes the use only of dehulled oats, he will push up the price of the maize meal mixture and will leave the price so high that he will reduce the consumption of maize meal still more than he has already reduced it. He will find that the introduction of such a measure of home grown cereals into the maize meal mixture will bring that mixture so near in quality to flour milling offals that the people will go to the flour milling offals and that no matter how high he pushes up the content of the maize meal mixture, he will not get rid of a single additional oat.
It sounds so simple—we cannot sell the oats so we will make them use it— but it is not so simple in practice. It sounds quite simple to blend all the surplus oats of the country into the maize meal mixture and think that they all automatically go into consumption but they do not, and the Minister is finding that to his cost already. Not only will he bring wheat offals into competition with the maize meal mixture by reducing the maize meal content too low, but he will also have to contend with the effect of his own policy on the feeding industry for which maize meal is used. He knows that the fowl industry is practically wiped out; he knows that the egg industry has been reduced by, at least, 25 per cent., if not more, and he knows that the bacon industry is in serious jeopardy. If these three industries vanish, the use of the maize meal mixture will practically stop. What placed the bacon industry of this country in the greatest jeopardy? Was it not the failure of the Minister himself to foresee the quota which this country would require to absorb all the pork and bacon that we could produce?
We have got to remember that so far as pork itself is concerned, which is intended for consumption as pork in Great Britain, the quota does not apply. It only applies to pig carcases sent to Great Britain for conversion into bacon or pigs consigned to Great Britain to be cured as bacon. The Minister said here to-day that he examined the figures in consultation with his experts and he made up his mind that they would fluctuate, I think, between 47,000 cwts. down to 20,000 cwts. The only reply he got to his application for a quota was "All right, we will give you that but level it up and consign it in equal monthly quantities." This, mark you, from the country with which we are engaged in a deadly economic war, a country that is trying to trample us into the ground and destroy everyone of us! That reply to the application for a quota was not what you would expect from a nation that was determined to wipe us out. But they said "All right, you estimate that to be the surplus. Very well, we will take it, but level it out over the months. Keep in cold store what you have in October and what we do not want until February. We will take your surplus." That is the reply from a market in regard to which President de Valera says "Thank God, we have got rid of it.""We will take all your surplus" and, presumably, if the Minister for Agriculture had a little more enterprise and had asked for double the quota, and had not crippled the pig trade of this country, we could have got it too.
We could have kept so many more people in this country at work and in profitable production if the Minister for Agriculture, instead of wasting his time at Ottawa trying to persuade the public there and elsewhere that he was a Republican and that he was not a Republican—that if you turned him up one way he was a Republican, and that if you stood him the other way he was not—had addressed himself to the practical considerations that arose there, not only could we have got twice as much, but we probably could have got more than twice as much of a quota. We could have created an artificial scarcity of bacon, an artificial scarcity of bacon at a price to be fixed by the British Government as remunerative for their farmers, because they were going to fix the quotas for foreign countries at such levels that they would only let in so much bacon as would fill the requirements of the British public at a price that would prove remunerative to the British farmer. Now we have got a quota of 33,000 cwts. per month, and Canada, if you bring their quota into comparison with ours with reference to their previous shipments, has three times as much, because they were looking after their business at Ottawa, preparing the ground and cultivating this valuable market. Is it any wonder that the word "Bedlam" occurs to the mind of President de Valera when he contemplates this country after two years of his administration?
At present the situation in connection with the bacon industry is extremely difficult because as a result of the quota we have got, it has been necessary to restrict sales in this time of abandoned production. But, of course, restrictions can only be enforced where you have got factories of a reasonable size with a reasonable organisation. The result of that is that half the butchers in the country very prudently are each buying four or six pigs, curing them and selling them as bacon. I need hardly say that they are selling them a few shillings cheaper than the price which the curers are in a position to offer. Where that will end or how it will end is difficult to know, but this much is certain, that a very chaotic and difficult situation has been created in the bacon trade. The only reason it is not worse is that the production of pigs was reduced enormously last January by the preposterous prices that were then ruling—about 24/- or 25/- per cwt. and, in some cases, less. The pig population of the country was reduced by about 25 per cent. That has contributed to relieve the present situation, but if the industry were maintaining anything like the same number of people it was maintaining 12 or 18 months ago, real chaos would prevail. God knows, it is bad enough as it is. The Minister said to-day, perfectly solemnly, that bacon cold stored for three, four, five or six months will not deteriorate. Little he knows, but he need not be a bit anxious because the deteriorated bacon will not go to John Bull. John Bull will take damn good care he will not take it. We shall eat the bad bacon. The cold-stored bacon will all be eaten by the simple Irish farmer and the new stuff will go over to John Bull. If we do not want to send it to him, if we fall by more than 5 per cent. of our quota in any fortnight, he will take it off our quota. Denmark is standing hat in hand at his doors begging him to whittle anything off other quotas, and drop it into their hat and they will be grateful and glad to get it. So there will be no standing on our dignity. We will send across the best we have or he will take off the next quota the quantity of deteriorated bacon sent across. When the Minister for Agriculture feels a spasm of Republican enthusiasm passing through his body, he will want to go and shake himself two or three times before he enters into negotiations in regard to the quota and that spasm that passes over him will cost about 1,000 cwts. per month in the bacon quota.
The Minister tossed off to-day as he was passing, the statement that the butter supplies were sufficient for the domestic and foreign markets, the Continental markets. I wonder would the Minister get a little more confidential and tell us what price he is getting on the continental markets? I was looking at the trade returns and I was going down President de Valera's alternative markets to see how they were getting on during the 12 months of the bounty and I found two or three of them—Germany, I think, Belgium and one other—had increased their purchases in the Saorstát. "Well," I said, "this really looks like business. The Minister for Industry and Commerce is on the job." Then I turned back to the kind of detailed information that is contained in the indiscreet interior pages of the estimate. I discovered that in every case in which there was an increase it was in respect of creamery butter. I wonder what price the Minister got for creamery butter in Germany, Belgium and other countries?