This is a Bill to amend, and extend, the Creamery Act, 1928. That was an Act which reorganised the whole of the creamery industry, and prevented people from operating new creameries except under licence. Section 2 gives power to the Minister to license a travelling creamery. That is necessary in consequence of the last Bill. Section 3 enables the Minister to prohibit the supply of milk to illegal creameries. As the law stands, even though the Department knows that milk is being supplied to an illegal creamery, they cannot take steps to deal with the offenders. In some cases they cannot discover who is the owner of the premises. No one will take responsibility for the premises. This Bill will enable the Minister to take action against a person who supplies milk to an illegal creamery, or a person who operated it. Under Section 4, if the owner is discovered, notice, in the form of a summons, can be nailed upon the door. If anyone turns up, in any court, in answer to that summons, the judge can make an order involving the forfeiture and seizure of the plant and utensils on the premises. If anybody turns up in court in answer to the summons which has been issued to the unknown person who owns the creamery, the court can amend the order, substituting the name of the person who admits ownership. Section 5 deals with the control and use of milk products and by-products. Under the original Act, nobody could operate a creamery for the manufacture of butter unless he got a licence from the Minister. It is proposed under this section to provide that any person who wants to operate a factory which uses products or by-products of milk will also have to get a licence. If he has not such a licence, the Minister may close the factory down. That is necessary for several reasons. Milk is being used in modern times not only for the manufacture of butter but for a lot of other things. It has always been used for the manufacture of cheese, and the Minister wants to control the production of cheese in the same way as the production of butter is controlled. Casein can also be made out of milk, and the Minister wants to control the production of casein. At the moment, he has power to control the production of butter.
Creamery (Amendment) Bill, 1934—Second Stage.
It is not intended to interfere with the making of cheese in a farmer's house?
No.
Even if that cheese is sold locally?
No.
Under Section 3, I understood the Minister to say that illegal creameries were operating. I should like to know how many of these creameries there are and where they are situate. I thought that, under previous legislation, there was ample power to deal with the whole creamery situation. In part of my constituency there has been a great deal of dissatisfaction with the legislation passed by the last Government with regard to the creameries. I hope that this Bill is not intended to intensify the hardships then caused. Under Section 5, I take it that it is the intention to grant only licences for the making of by-products such as cheese. We all know one creamery which has developed that line to a considerable extent. Is it the intention of this Bill to limit the power of any other creamery which might care to develop along those lines? Is the section intended to prevent anybody else from developing a product which might already be developed by another creamery? We know that there are other by-products, such as dried milk, manufactured by creameries. I should like the Minister to say if it is the intention of this section to prevent development on these lines by any other creamery.
With regard to the Deputy's question on Section 3, there are a number of illegal creameries——
Where?
A little bit further south than the Deputy. They are carried on——
By whom?
Groups of farmers. They meet on certain premises, and the cream is separated and turned into butter. Although the Department have strong suspicion as to who the owner of the premises is and who is supplying the capital, they have no legal proof of ownership and they cannot prove ownership in court. This section is brought forward at the instance of those interested in the welfare of the existing creameries. After a creamery has been established at a great deal of expense to the local farmers and to the State, it is necessary that the supplies of milk in that district should go into that creamery in order to keep it alive. The Deputy knows that if a creamery into which a fair supply of milk is going is deserted by a number of farmers, it is threatened with collapse if it was on the border-line previously. A strong, prosperous creamery is very much weakened if people on the outskirts go out——
To establish another creamery.
An illegal creamery. It is illegal, but the ownership of the illegal creamery cannot be proved. In this Bill the Minister for Agriculture is simply taking power to proceed against the owner of an establishment whose name he does not know.
Are these creameries paying the levy?
They are not paying any levies. That is one reason for getting after them.
How can you proceed against them if you have not the names?
The Deputy should read Section 4.
I have read it.
If the person is not known there will be a notice to the person maintaining a creamery at such a place.
Where is "creamery" defined?
Who is to be the defendant?
I take it that what the Minister refers to as an "illegal creamery" is where a group of farmers bring their milk together, separate the cream and make butter, as in the old days they packed the firkins co-operatively. This comes to the same thing. I am afraid that if the Minister pursues that and closes up an illegal creamery, it will be a very short step to declare that the making of butter by farmers in their private dairies is illegal.
What is the supply to these creameries?
I cannot say.
Is there no way of finding out?
I have not the information at the moment. I suppose that a fairly rough estimate could be made. This is going on on a sufficiently large scale to cause uneasiness to those interested in the permanence of the existing creameries and in their prosperity. The question was also raised on Section 5 whether this applies to cheese as a product which people cannot engage in the manufacture of without a licence. The section reads:—
The Minister may by order declare that this section shall apply to any specified description of business which consists wholly or substantially of the working, finishing, or otherwise making available for sale of any specified milk product or by-product....
That includes the process of making cheese. It would also include casein and dry milk. It is the Minister's intention, if there is a sufficient supply of a certain article made from milk or from a milk by-product, that he is not going to allow people who have the initiative to start that to be burst up by undue competition.
Casein is a rather valuable by-product. If it were contemplated starting a factory for the production of casein I take it that those starting it would have to obtain a licence?
Yes.
I should like to point out in connection with Section 3 that the information which the Minister has supplied to me is too vague. I know the dissatisfaction which exists even to this day in my constituency owing to legislation passed by the previous Government and I am not prepared to subscribe to legislation now which seems to me to tend somewhat in the same direction. As to the so-called illegal creameries, I would want to know their supplies, the distance they are from another creamery, and such information as that, because it is inconceivable to me that it is anything like what Deputy Belton said, that a few farmers come together and separate their milk and make butter. I am of the opinion that these are fairly large creameries. I may be wrong in that, but I have that idea. Probably at some future time I may be able to get the information for which I am looking. I was certainly very slow to subscribe to the legislation passed by the Cumann na nGaedheal Government, under which farmers were made to suffer desperate hardships, such as £3 a cow and so on, and to this day they are grumbling about it. I am not prepared to put that hardship again on the farmers without having more information than has been made available by the Minister in connection with Section 3.
We will meet it on Committee.