I would like to say a few words on the bounty question. It is very difficult to understand how the bounties are administered. Invariably, the people whom they are intended to benefit get little or no assistance from them. I will give the House one or two instances. In the case of turkeys at the present time there is a bounty of 5d. a lb. given on them and they are being sold at 6d.
That is, they are being sold at a penny a pound, and that simply means that John Bull is getting turkeys at a 1d. a lb. The policy of Fianna Fáil always was to quit giving John Bull cheap food, and now he is getting the best he ever got at what was an unthinkable price some time ago. There is a general complaint in every branch of the trade that the bounties are not being passed on. In the fat cattle business, for instance, we see that, although a price has been fixed, the Minister has found it impossible to put it into operation. He found it necessary to reduce the price, uneconomic as it was, from 25/- to 22/-, and I do not believe that 30 per cent. of the cattle will make that price, and I do not think the Minister can enforce it. I do not think he can overturn the whole law of economics. I know that bounties are all right in theory and they are necessary. I will say that they are necessary apart altogether from the economic war. In any country where protective tariffs are imposed to help industry, a bounty provision is the only way to protect an industry which depends on the export of its exportable surplus, such as agriculture, so that I am not speaking against bounties. With the present quota system, however, it is impossible to give effect to the Minister's intention to pass on the bounties to the producer.
There is another more serious aspect than that of fat cattle. I refer to the store trade. If fat cattle are not realising an economic price, what is the position of the small farmer in the poorer parts of the country who is not getting 25/- or 22/- or 10/- a cwt. for his cattle? If there was one thing more than another which the Fianna Fáil Government professed to be, it was that they were a Government of the small farmers, and the small men. I know the position of the small farmers in Co. Cavan. They cannot sell their store cattle at all, and I know of a very large area in a mountainous district in which they did not get half their hay saved this season. They have no outlet for their cattle and they are taking them out and leaving them on the road. That has happened, and I can give several instances of cattle being left on the road. That is the position in County Cavan. It is so serious that the Cavan Co. Committee of Agriculture, on which there is a Fianna Fáil majority, were unanimous in passing a resolution which I shall read. A Deputy on the Fianna Fáil side of this House is a member of that Committee, and I hope he will try to impress on the Minister the necessity for doing something in the matter. I do not want to occupy the time of the House, but the matter is grave and should be seriously considered by the Minister. This is the resolution passed:
That this Committee desires to draw the attention of the Minister for Agriculture to the recent Act whereby fat cattle are realising 25/- per cwt., and to point out that that will be of little material benefit to the Cavan farmers and small store cattle raisers, we urge on him that action should be taken to safeguard these interests, and to ensure that the holders of export licences will give the last penny in value for the store animals purchased.
I think this is a matter which the Minister must do something to meet— the situation of the people who are raising small store cattle, especially in mountainous districts. It is impossible, no matter what you give for beef, to compel any purchaser of store cattle to buy these cattle from the farmers, for the simple reason that there are ten store cattle offered for the one beast wanted, and the pick of the best cattle will be bought at any price, while the poorer class of cattle coming off the poor land will not be bought at all. I should like to know what the Minister proposes to do, because he must do something. The Executive Council are responsible for this policy, and remember that the people who are so affected are contributing taxes for the payment of bounties which are no advantage at all to them, so far as store cattle are concerned.
I notice in the Estimate also that the Minister proposes to try further experiments in regard to finding alternative markets. I should be very glad if the Minister could succeed in finding those alternative markets, but I have not the slightest hope that he will find them. I never had any hope that he could because the market he had thrown away was the best market in the world and was at our door. There was no use going to the countries in Europe, which have been exporting to Great Britain, to see if they would buy our stuff. He told us on one occasion that he had been getting in here and there—that he sold a few cows in one place, a few hens in another, a bit of butter and some eggs in a third and so on. He had hopes then that that was a beginning, and that he would improve. I should like him to tell us now what the improvement is, and I should like him to give the House a clear indication of what advance he has made on the foundation he laid then. Is he still in the position of having to experiment with regard to finding alternative markets while the country is going to the dogs? It is a humiliating thing sometimes for a member of this House, even though he is a member of the Opposition, to see the Minister going around the markets of the world like a hawker to sell small items—matters of a few thousand pounds—when there are millions and millions concerned in respect of a country which had an export trade valued for £40,000,000 a few years ago. We all feel humiliated to think that a Minister of the Free State should have degenerated into something in the nature of an agricultural pedlar.
I hope the Minister will take this matter more seriously and make some effort to remedy the situation which makes these difficulties for himself and is creating poverty and distress for the agricultural community and which is beginning to reflect itself on every section of the community. I hope the Minister will try to induce his colleagues on the Executive Council to do something for the particular industry over which he presides in the same way as the Minister for Industry and Commerce tries to help the industry in which he is interested. The Minister for Industry and Commerce tries to get an economic, or, perhaps, a little more than economic price for whatever is produced by the new industries which have been started, but the Minister for Agriculture, admittedly, does not make any attempt to see that the agricultural community gets anything like an economic price. That, of course, leads to unemployment and, in fact, it is at the very bottom of the whole unemployment problem—the failure of agriculture and the inability of the farmer to pay workmen, because, as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance told us here a week ago, some of the small farmers—and I know them myself—who were giving employment some years ago to others besides themselves are now taking the bit out of the labourer's mouth and trying to get jobs on the road, in order to keep the wolf from the door. That is the position that the agricultural community has got to and that is what the small farmer has been brought to.
Deputy Hugo Flinn told us that the increase in the register of unemployment was due to the registration of those small farmers who are looking for relief. They do not mind how much a week they get. They are not looking for 30/- or even 24/-. They will be very glad if they get £1, or if they get any money. I know cases where they would be glad to work for any money. They have been trying to get certificates in order to qualify for unemployment assistance and whatever is added to it, but they find it impossible to get them. Their farms are reckoned up against them as means when, in fact, they have no means. Instead of their farms being any advantage to them, they are a great disadvantage. They would be very happy if they could be in the position of some of the labourers now so that they would have a chance of getting work or unemployment assistance.
