Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 26 Mar 1936

Vol. 61 No. 3

Vote 52—Agriculture.

Minister for Agriculture (Dr. Ryan)

I move:—

Go ndeontar suim ná raghaidh thar £443,600 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, 1937, chun Tuarastail agus Costaisí Oifig an Aire Talmhaíochta agus seirbhísí áirithe atá fé riaradh na hOifige sin, maraon le hIldeontaisí-i-gCabhair.

That a sum not exceeding £443,600 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, 1937, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Minister for Agriculture and of certain services administered by that Office, including sundry Grants-in-Aid.

This year, as compared with last year, there is a net decrease in connection with the Estimate for the Department of Agriculture of £333,060. There are certain increases and certain decreases, and I would like to say a few words on the rather large items that make up these increases and decreases. With regard to sub-head H—Grants to County Committees of Agriculture— there is an increase of £8,595, and this is entirely due to the cost of the distribution of cattle export licences, which has passed into the hands of these committees. Under sub-head OO (2)—Advances to the Dairy Produce (Price Stabilisation) Fund—there is an increase of £20,000. This is due to the fact that it is anticipated there will be a larger export of butter during the first half of the year, and that fund will be overdrawn to the extent of £20,000 more than it was last year. The total amount will be completely paid back before the end of the financial year.

As regards sub-head O (8)—Pigs and Bacon Act, 1935—there is an increase of £10,606. That Act was not in full operation for the whole of last year, but it will be in the coming financial year. Under sub-head O (10)—Agricultural Products (Regulation of Export) Acts, 1933 and 1935—there is an increase of practically £200,000. Last year there was only a token amount of £5, because the export of eggs and butter to the Continent was financed out of funds provided by the Newmarket Dairy Company. It was thought more advisable to finance this completely out of moneys voted by the Dáil, so that the Dáil can see how this trade is being carried on. The total amount will, it is expected, be paid back before the end of the financial year. Sub-head O (12) deals with the Acquisition of Land (Allotments) (Amendment) Act, 1934. There is an increase of about £5,000. Under the legislation passed a few years ago, the allotments scheme has been making progress and it is anticipated a larger amount will be spent during the coming year than during the present year.

There are also decreases, and the first big decrease is under sub-head M (5)—Improvement of the Creamery Industry. This sub-head deals with the purchase of proprietary creameries, the sale of those to co-operative societies; also the purchase of co-operative societies and the reorganisation and resale of those societies. All that will cost £28,000 less than during the present year. Sub-head O (9) deals with the Cereals Acts, and there is a decrease there of £295,000, mainly due to the elimination of the payment of wheat bounties out of voted moneys. Under sub-head O (13)—Slaughter of Cattle and Sheep Acts—there is a decrease of £135,000. Under this sub-head there is an increase under certain headings such as, for instance, the purchase of cattle for canning. There will be an increase there of £37,000. As regards the purchase of old cows, there will be an increase of £110,000. On the other hand, there is a decrease under the heading of beef distribution and the amount of the decrease is £141,000. Then there is a decrease of about £140,000 in the case of the purchase of cattle for export. The net result generally is that under that sub-head there is a decrease of £135,000.

There are a few items also under the Appropriations-in-Aid. As I have mentioned already, the total amount voted under the Dairy Produce (Stabilisation) Fund, £200,000, will be repaid before the end of the year. It is necessary to finance the fund during the early part of the year. There is a big export of butter during April, May and June. A bounty has to be paid on that butter and the levies collected would be very much in arrear until towards the end of the year. As the levies come in towards the winter months, the fund becomes solvent and the amount advanced from the Exchequer can be repaid. Under sub-head O (10)—Agricultural Products (Regulation of Export) Acts, there will be an Appropriation-in-Aid of £200,000, which, as I have already mentioned, is the total of the Vote for trading by the Government in agricultural exports. Under sub-head O (13), there are Appropriations-in-Aid under the Cattle and Sheep Acts of £285,000 in levies, £200,000 for cattle exported, and £25,000 in respect of factory receipts for the cattle sold to the Waterford factory for the purposes of canning and meat extracts. Under sub-head O (8)— Pigs and Bacon Act—there will be a receipt of £16,000.

Now, to go further into the Cattle and Sheep Act, there are orders in preparation at the moment which will make a very substantial difference to the Estimates, as made out here. These Estimates, of course, as the House will understand, must be prepared under the existing legislation. An Order, however, is being prepared, which, if not nullified by the House, will come into operation and will reduce the levy on cattle and sheep under that Act by half. That will make a difference, presumably, of over £140,000 in receipts under that Act, if the Act runs for the full year. There is also an Order being prepared which will increase the price to beef recipients under the scheme by 1d. per lb. At the present time, the butcher who is supplying meat under that Act to recipients is getting 4d. per lb. The butcher gets 2d. of that 4d. from the recipients and gets the other 2d. out of Government funds. Owing to the increase in the price of fat cattle, butchers have made a strong case to the effect that they cannot afford to supply beef, under the scheme, at that price, and I have agreed, in meeting with them some time ago, to increase the price by 1d. per lb. from the 1st April.

Mr. Belton

At whose expense?

Dr. Ryan

At the expense of the recipient.

Mr. Belton

The recipient will pay 3d., I presume?

Dr. Ryan

Yes. Other fundamental changes are contemplated in the whole scheme of beef distribution and collection of levies, but it is not necessary to dwell upon that question at the moment because these changes will necessitate legislation and will, therefore, come before the House for discussion in the ordinary course of events, I expect, before the end of this Session. With regard to cattle, apart from what I have mentioned, there has been recently a considerable improvement in prices. As a matter of fact, there appears to be no great difficulty in the export of cattle at the present time—I mean with regard to the getting of licences—and as far as I can find out, I think that a person with a licence to export a fat beast at the present time is unable to get any price for it. He might get something small for it, but at any rate there is no price such as there was some time ago. In fact, on getting a return of the number of cattle exported each month, and comparing that with the number of licences issued for fat cattle each month, we find that a considerable number of these licences are not fully used. It has appeared that there are certain farmers throughout the country applying for licences to the country committees of agriculture and getting these licences, but not using them. That may militate against us very strongly at a later period, because we find that there will be more cattle later on in the year than there will be licences to cover, and in that way I think that we ought, as far as possible, to try to get the cattle out while the licences are available. I think that, in that connection, it will probably be necessary to keep people from applying for licences, unless they are going to use them, by making a small charge—possibly, a very small charge—for the licence, in order to prevent people applying for licences that they do not need.

Mr. Belton

Who will get the money? Will it be the county committees?

Dr. Ryan

Yes—the county committee. While the charge I have in mind would not be sufficient to cover it——

Mr. Dillon

A 1/- or 1/6 would be quite enough.

Dr. Ryan

Yes. It would probably be enough. I think that people would not apply for a licence if there were such a charge, unless they really needed the licence.

Mr. Dillon

Quite. It will prevent them applying for a licence on chance.

Dr. Ryan

Naturally, one cannot be sure of what may happen, but it looks, as things are, as if we shall always be subject to some kind of restriction, even though we may have, at the moment, a sufficient quota and sufficient means of getting rid of our cattle, and even if we do not feel any great stress in that regard such as we felt two or three years ago. The question, then, naturally arises whether we should restrict production in any way. I think I mentioned here, on a former occasion, that various ways and means had been examined as to the best way of bringing the number of cattle in this country down within reach of the available market at home and abroad, and it was then contemplated that there might be a registration of cows. That, however, could only be done by methods which would entail many disadvantages. In the first place, of course, it would interfere very much with the farmers' freedom of action and also it would be difficult to administer, and it would inevitably create hardship on individuals, because, no matter how a rule or regulation may be made, it is impossible to cover all the exceptional cases; and therefore it does inevitably create hardship on certain individuals. Therefore, I am hopeful that by the present methods of trying to eliminate the old cows and by the slaughter of a certain number of calves, production might be kept within certain limits.

Mr. Belton

Is the slaughter of calves contemplated this year?

Dr. Ryan

Yes. It is in operation.

Mr. Belton

It is not the calves that should be slaughtered.

Dr. Ryan

Well, perhaps I agree with that, but I might not agree as to who should be slaughtered. It must be remembered, however, that these are voluntary schemes, and that if a farmer thinks that he ought to keep his calf and get rid of his old cow, or to keep the old cow and get rid of the calf, he is at liberty to do so. There is that much to be said for the scheme, at any rate. From June next, it is expected that we may be able to get rid of about 1,800 old cows per week. Up to the present it has been about 900 per week. Up to the present, we have been covering the country very slowly. In fact, up to the present we have only done the counties of Kerry, Waterford, Clare and Galway; and at the rate we were going it would take us two or three years, or possibly more, to cover the whole country. However, with the extensions that are being made to the factory, it will be possible to proceed much more quickly. At the present moment we are starting in the County Mayo. We may then do Donegal, Sligo and Leitrim. It is not expected that it will take very long to deal with these counties. Then it is proposed to deal with Cavan and Monaghan, and then go on to Leinster. We shall then have three very big creamery counties— Cork, Tipperary and Limerick—and they will take some time to deal with.

Mr. O'Leary

There are a lot of them gone into Kerry already.

Dr. Ryan

That may be so

Mr. Belton

There may not be so many after the sheriff gets there.

Dr. Ryan

After having made some progress in clearing out these old cows in the western counties, from Kerry upwards, it is hoped to do something in the way of following up a tuberculosis scheme, and, in that way, to make-some inroads on that problem with regard to our cattle. During the year, the three Governments of the Saorstát, Great Britain, and Northern Ireland, agreed to adopt, simultaneously, means calculated to minimise, and eventually to eliminate, the trouble due to the warble fly. Various calculations have been made and various figures have been given as to the great ultimate benefit that would accrue from the adoption of such measures; but even if we were only to calculate on the basis of a couple of shillings per hide, it would still be a great gain to the agricultural community to adopt such measures, even for the sake of two or three or four years' attention to the problem that exists at the moment. It would be of benefit to the agricultural community to have these regulations enforced, even for two or three or four years. The gain would not be confined entirely to the value of the hides, because Deputies here who have any experience of cattle in summer know they cannot thrive or improve while being annoyed by these flies and would naturally do much better if the flies were eliminated altogether.

There was a very big production of dairy produce during the year. Production has been increasing during the last three or four years. I think at the moment we have a larger number of cows in the 26 counties than ever we had before. Taking creamery butter, 351,232 cwts. were exported in 1933, and that figure went up to 473,152 cwts. in 1935. At the same time exports of cream were reduced from 46,232 cwts. in 1933 to 33,461 cwts. in 1935, and of cheese increased from 609 cwts. in 1933 to 9,145 cwts. in 1935. Creamery products as a whole have shown a considerable increase in export in 1934 over 1933, and in 1935 over 1934. The position in regard to cheese is much better. The total production of cheese in the four years was 2,590 cwts. in 1932, 18,166 cwts. in 1933, 24,498 cwts. in 1934, and 31,403 in 1935. Now we are producing all the cheese we require and exporting 9,000 cwts. To give an idea of the progress made in cheese production, our total output in 1932 was 2,500 cwts., and in 1935 it was 31,000 cwts. We had a census made of our creameries in 1934, and as a result we got complete figures of the quantity of milk taken in by the creameries. In that year 209,604,723 gallons were received and used as follows:—Butter - making, 197,436,340 gallons; cheese - making, 2,454,015 gallons; dried milk, 445,565 gallons; whole milk sales, cream sales and used for condensed milk, 9,268,803 gallons.

The number of milk suppliers to creameries in that year was 82,370. The total value of milk products was £4,363,921, of which £3,551,847 was paid to suppliers, the difference representing the cost of production.

By means of bounties under the Dairy Produce (Price Stabilisation) Acts, 1932 and 1935, and subsidies out of the Vote for export bounties and subsidies, producers of creamery butter, cheese and other products received a much better average return on their home sales and exports than the world value as shown by the following prices of creamery butter during the last four seasons. In 1932-33 the world value of Saorstát butter was 101/- per cwt.; the average f.o.r. price secured to creameries was 119/-. In 1933-34 the world value of Saorstát butter was 81/-; the average f.o.r. price to creameries 107/-. In 1934-35 the world value of Saorstát butter was 73/6 per cwt.; the average f.o.r. price received by the creamery was 103/-. In 1935-36 the world value of our butter was 91/- per cwt.; the average f.o.r. price secured to creameries was 108/-.

Mr. Belton

What were the actual receipts from our export of butter?

Dr. Ryan

The actual figure was £4,363,921. The figures I have given represent the f.o.r. price secured to creameries for large consignments. Every creamery sells small lots locally, for which it obtains a better price, with the result that creameries averaged in 1935 about 110/- a cwt. on all their output—equivalent to 4.17d. per gallon for milk, the separated milk being returned to the supplier. Many of the larger creameries paid a higher milk price as their working expenses per cwt. on butter were lower than the general average for the country.

Mr. Belton

What was the average price?

Dr. Ryan

4.17d. was the average price. The export trade opened badly last year, the delivered price at the beginning of the season being only 77/- per cwt. After May there was an improvement, month by month, until October, when an average price of 121/- was obtained. The price fell to 108/- in November. For the small quantities exported since December our creameries have obtained from 111/- to 114/- per cwt., which has been brought up to 129/- by means of subsidies. The price on the home market was maintained throughout the season at 139/- for large consignments and 143/- for small lots, equivalent to a retail price of 1/5 per lb. The estimated revenue from levy on creamery products for the year is £498,000, which has been utilised in the payment of bounties on exports of butter, cream and cheese, etc. In addition a sum of £660,000 was provided out of the Exchequer for subsidies and dairy produce generally. This sum was used to off-set the British duty on imports. It is calculated that under the arrangements in force creamery farmers received for their butter during the season £613,000 more than if there were no duties on Saorstát products entering the United Kingdom, no levy and bounty under the Dairy Produce (Price Stabilisation) Act and no subsidies. In other words, as a corresponding gain was secured on other products, the total advantage of the Government's scheme to creamery farmers was not less than £650,000.

Bounties and subsidies similar to those for creamery butter were paid on exports of factory and farm butter. The home price of non-creamery butter was also maintained at a comparatively high figure owing to the enhanced price at which creamery butter was selling. It is computed that producers averaged 1½d. per lb. on their total sales of non-creamery butter more than the world value. The amount collected on levies on non-creamery butter and registration fees is estimated at £38,000, all of which has been expended on bounty on exports. It has been found from experience to be absolutely necessary to collect this levy.

Also during the year there was a beginning made on the very difficult question of ordered marketing. Deputies will remember that when the Price Stabilisation Bill was going through there was a clause in it that enabled the Minister for Agriculture to make a difference in the bounty paid to those who joined the ordered marketing scheme and those who remained outside. Advantage was, taken of that clause of the Bill and a beginning was made rather late in the year with this scheme of ordered marketing. There was as little interference as possible, apart from the fact, of course, that a somewhat lower bounty was paid to those who remained outside, but as a result of the efforts that were made we had for the first time the experience of bringing the price for our butter higher than what was realised for New Zealand butter on the British market and holding it there. There have been occasions, of course, in the past when the price for Free State butter went above that for New Zealand butter, but very quickly fell below it again, and taking the year's average it always worked out lower. But from the time this scheme came into operation we brought our price up to the New Zealand price, gradually went a little above it, and held that position until the end of the season.

Mr. Dillon

Hear, hear!

Dr. Ryan

It is hoped by those who have been operating that scheme that they will succeed this year in holding a higher price than New Zealand throughout the year. If they only succeed in getting 5/- more through this marketing scheme—of course, I do not say that we can hope to hold that figure all the time, but it must be remembered that we were a few shillings under the New Zealand price —it would mean £100,000 a year to our dairy farmers, which is a very big item. I hope also to see some improvement this year in the condensed milk business and in the milk powder business, both in regard to the volume of output and in regard to price. Our exports of eggs for the year were lower than they were for the previous year. There has been a continuous decline in our exports of eggs for six or seven years. We must take serious note of this, and I am confident that we may be able to offer some inducement to poultry keepers this year to increase their output of eggs. With regard to the pig industry——

Mr. Dillon

May I interrupt the Minister, before he leaves the subject of poultry? Can he say when the exports of eggs actually started falling?

Dr. Ryan

I think it was in 1927. I do not want to be tied to that, but I think it was from that year on.

Professor O'Sullivan

Has the Minister got the rate for the different years?

Dr. Ryan

Well, I could get it during the debate.

Mr. Belton

Has the drop been continuous?

Dr. Ryan

It has been continuous.

Mr. Belton

And uniform?

Dr. Ryan

I do not know if it was uniform, but it was continuous.

Mr. O'Leary

I am sure you do not.

Dr. Ryan

I did quote the figures, as a matter of fact, about a month ago. The census of pigs and bacon on the 1st June, 1935, showed an increase over the previous year of 12.3 per cent., that is an increase from 968,413 to 1,087,679 pigs. This increase in the number of pigs in the country is reflected in the number of pigs dealt with in the bacon factories. In 1935, we had 1,062,000 pigs dealt with in the bacon factories. In 1932, which was a fairly normal year, the factories dealt with 744,000. The bacon export trade showed considerable expansion during the year, increasing by about 25 per cent. over the previous year. In 1935, we exported 501,128 cwts., valued at £1,493,076. In 1934, we exported 401,702 cwts., valued at £1,288,694. This is a very big increase in export, when it is remembered at the same time that our total home consumption is being supplied by our own factories. As a matter of fact, even with this very big output which I have already quoted for the factories, 60 per cent. is still consumed by our own people and only 40 per cent. exported.

Mr. Dillon

Where are the exports to? Is the Minister in a position to say?

Dr. Ryan

Practically entirely to Great Britain. The arrangements which have been made for a bacon quota for the present year provide for an increase of ten per cent. on the exports for 1935. The quality of our bacon is good, as everybody knows. In fact it gets a price as high as the best English bacon, and sometimes something higher, on the British market. We hope that when the boards have got an opportunity of operating the Pigs and Bacon Act for a few years they may even improve the quality of and the marketing facilities for our bacon in Great Britain or other markets if they can find them. Of course, in addition to bacon we also have a trade in the export of live pigs and pork. The number of live pigs has gone down during the last few years because we had not a great number of pigs to spare after filling our export quotas and supplying the home market. The export of live pigs in 1935 was 126,640. In 1932, which is about a normal year, the export was 303,234. The export of live pigs varied, during the previous ten years, from 300,000 to 400,000.

Mr. Belton

Are they calculated in our export quota?

Dr. Ryan

Some of them are. The value of our live pigs exported in 1935 was £428,000. Those live pigs are exported under a quota arrangement with Great Britain for conversion into bacon, and also as uncertified pigs. A certain number are exported under certificates to be used by bacon factories in Great Britain, but apart from that, the pigs that go out to be killed for pork—what are called cutters—are not subject to the quota. As a matter of fact, this trade in cutters absorbs a certain number of pigs which are not at all suitable for our own factories and would not be taken by them. They are heavy, fat pigs. The third form of our export trade in relation to the pig industry is the trade in fresh pork. In 1935 the figure was 140,000 cwts. and in 1932 it was 262,000 cwts. There was no great fluctuation since 1932. It would appear to be a rather stable trade for the last few years. There was 26 factories dealing with this particular trade and I think that there are enough. The reason why I say that is because there are a number of co-operative societies contemplating going into this pork trade, and I am afraid that if a large number of people were to go into this trade they would destroy any profits that there might be in it, and make it impossible both for those who are in it and those who come into it to operate.

The prices realised for our fresh pork in Smithfield are practically the top prices for English pork, the occasional difference amounting to only about 2d. per stone of 8 lbs. Since the Fresh Meat Act was passed the pork that is being shipped from this country under proper conditions has earned a very high reputation. We are now in the position, taking pigs generally, that we are supplying in full our requirements at home and are maintaining or developing the export trade in bacon. There is, of course, a certain amount of room for expansion but it is difficult to say how far that expansion could go. It will also be noticed from the figures I have mentioned that our exports of live pigs have gone down somewhat while our exports of bacon have gone up, and this, as far as it can be done, is a very desirable tendency as it creates a certain amount of employment here at home in the manufacture of pigs. Taking the whole pig industry, the value of exports for the four years 1932 to 1935, taking bacon, live pigs, pork, and carcases to Northern Ireland, which trade is now practically wiped out, we exported in 1935 £2,275,000 worth; in 1934, £1,978,000; in 1933, £1,499,000 and in 1932, £2,373,000. The Pigs and Bacon Act of 1935 was passed into law on the 20th of June and I want to say a word or two about the working of it.

Mr. Dillon

Are these figures for bacon or pig products?

Dr. Ryan

Pigs, pork, and bacon— the whole lot. The principal influence of the Pigs and Bacon Act, as far as improving the condition of the farmers, is the grading that takes place in the bacon factories after slaughter. That is supervised by Government inspectors. The prices fixed give every encouragement to farmers to produce pigs of the best quality. The difference in price between the highest-class pig and the lowest is as much as 14s. per cwt. That, of course, has been fixed by the curer and producer members on the Pigs Board. Grades have been fixed bearing as close relation as possible to the value of the bacon produced from each class of pig. There are already, as a matter of fact, indications that farmers are beginning to realise that it pays them better to produce the Class I.A. pig. Returns which come monthly show more pigs each month going into Class I.A.

Mr. Holohan

What would be the average price of the Class I A pig?

Dr. Ryan

The present price is 64/- for the top and 50/- for the lowest. But during a recent week figures were got from a couple of the largest factories, and the average price paid was 61/6. That shows that a very big number of pigs were in the highest class. The average was 61/6; the highest was 64/- and the lowest 50/-.

Mr. O'Leary

What is the price of the heavy pig exported to Great Britain?

Dr. Ryan

The exporters are, of course, competing against the factories, and evidently competing rather successfully, in getting a certain number of pigs exported.

Mr. O'Leary

That is not answering my question. Will you give the price?

Dr. Ryan

I could not say. What I want to make out is this: that I could not say what the average price is. They must be competing against the factories in each class in order to get the pigs.

Mr. O'Leary

Is it not a fact that the heavy pigs exported to Great Britain are making as good a price as the best quality here?

Dr. Ryan

They are not.

Mr. O'Leary

Will you tell us the difference?

Dr. Ryan

I do not think I could give that figures. It is very hard to know.

Mr. O'Leary

I may be able to get it.

Dr. Ryan

It is very hard to know what the exporters are paying for the pigs, because they are buying them by hand. We do not know what the weight of them may be. If the Deputy wants to get information genuinely, I shall give it to him, but if he wants to make political capital out of it, I will not give any information.

Mr. O'Leary

That is what I am asking. Do not treat me like a baby.

Dr. Ryan

The Deputy does not want information, I know. He wants to have a row, as usual. If I had the information I would give it to him. If I bring pigs to a fair and sell them by hand, how do I know what the price is per cwt.? We have no returns to show what they are getting per cwt. Most of the pigs are bought by hand.

Mr. Bennett

You can judge it.

Dr. Ryan

You must judge it. Of course, the sellers and the buyers do judge it, but we have not the returns of their judgment.

Mr. O'Leary

How are they sold in Great Britain?

Dr. Ryan

By weight. We have not got that. As Deputies are aware, before the Act came into operation there were very acute fluctuations in the price of pigs—in fact, fluctuations from day to day, almost from factory to factory. Even on the same day we sometimes saw in the newspapers that one factory was offering one price and another factory another price. That was one thing that we tried to remedy by this legislation, and the farmer now at least knows somewhat in advance what price he may get for his pigs in the market. The prices have been changed rather frequently since the Act came into operation, but it is hoped that, with more experience as regards the number of pigs coming in and of the working of the Act and the costings, it may not be necessary in a year or two years to change those prices nearly as often as at present. It will be impossible, of course, to make one rate; that is, I am afraid we will always have more pigs in the autumn than any other time of the year. If we have, it will always be necessary to have a lower price when pigs are plentiful than when they are scarce, because if the same price were to rule the whole year round, I am afraid we would have all the pigs in the autumn and none at other times of the year.

There is another matter in connection with this Pigs and Bacon Act which it might be no harm to refresh Deputies' minds upon and that is the question of the hypothetical and the appointed prices. I have been asked questions from time to time about that and I should like to say a word about it. The hypothetical price is the price that the Board thinks would be paid for pigs if there was no Board; in other words, if there was ordinary demand and supply. The appointed price is the price they think they ought to fix under the Act, taking into consideration all the things they were asked to take into consideration, such as the price of bacon, the amount of bacon in cold storage, the price of feeding stuffs for the previous four months and the other factors. That is why there has been sometimes some confusion between the hypothetical and the appointed price, and why they are different on occasions.

I should also like to make some reference to the system of marketing pigs in the form of carcases. It is only done of course in the northern counties and it is a practice that has a great many disadvantages. In the first place, when a farmer brings the carcases to the market he is compelled to sell them. That was all right when there was no such thing as a production quota or an export quota. But now, when the factories may be tied to producing only a certain amount difficulties have arisen in some cases. It would be much easier for the Board to deal with this matter if live pigs were being marketed instead of carcases. Apart from that, the factories also claim, and I suppose we will agree with them, that they can kill pigs better than the farmer and that the pigs they kill in the factories are in a much better condition for conversion into bacon than the carcases of pigs killed at the farmer's house; brought on a cart to the fair or market, and on a lorry or something else to the factory.

Another trouble in these areas is the fact that they have a breed of pig known as the Ulster pig. Factories do not like these pigs and perhaps they have good reason for it. These pigs are inclined to be fatter than the Irish white pig. Another objection is that when brought in as carcases they do not hold as well as if they were brought in alive. That is, they are bad travellers and not able to stand up against any hardship

On the whole, I think that the working of the Act has been as successful as one could expect in such a short time. When these people came into control in the beginning there was a desperate situation facing them owing to the very large number of pigs. They had to try to keep up the price within some reasonable limits. We were tied with regard to export and with regard to home consumption and it was extremely difficult to deal with the problem. But in most parts of the country they had cleared up any trouble there was within two or three weeks and since that things have gone smoothly. Individual farmers of course may even still hold that they would prefer a free market and a free price. I do not think that any farmers, I do not mind how many pigs he produces in the year, can have the same experience with regard to the weight of pigs at sight as the buyer. The buyer is at it every day in the week, and the farmers only occasionally. In most cases the buyer is likely to get the best of the bargain.

I have spoken already about dressed pork. There has also been a growing trade in dressed lamb for export which reached a record figure in 1935. That also is fetching top prices in the export market. It is classed as good as the English or any other lamb prepared for sale. In the matter of sheep and lambs as in the case of bacon the home market is absorbing about two-thirds of our output. Now to deal with the cereals, I come to wheat first. In 1932 the area under wheat was only about 20,000 acres. In 1933, the first year in which the Government scheme of standard prices and bounty was in operation, the area under wheat increased to 50,000 acres. That was sufficient to supply about 3½ per cent. of the output of the flour mills. Of course, it must be remembered that the 20,000 acres grown in 1932 was grown mostly by farmers for their own use. As far as we can calculate the produce of 20,000 acres is still mainly used by farmers for their own use and it is only the additional acreage that is put on the market. As a result of the publicity given to this scheme, and also as a result of the experience gained by the neighbours of those who grew the wheat as to the prices realised in 1933, the acreage in 1934 reached 93,000 and in 1935 it went up to 163,000 acres.

Mr. Dillon

What percentage of the gross requirements was that?

Dr. Ryan

It was 21½ per cent. In 1935 as a result of the amending legislation introduced here, the farmers benefited. They were paid in full for their wheat crop when delivered. That is they were paid the ordinary world prices and in addition to that the equivalent of the bounty in operation during the previous years. I think that the farmers, pleased as they were by that arrangement, were inclined to make a very big increase in their acreage this year. But as we know, the season for sowing wheat from October onwards was very unsuitable. The result was that the acreage under wheat at the end of February was not any higher than it had been in February last year. There has been a very considerable amount of wheat sown during the month of March in spite of the unfavourable weather that we are having, and it is possible that there will be a slight increase in the acreage this year as compared with last year.

We did take powers to see that the millers had provided storage for any wheat that might be offered during the autumn of last year, and we also took powers to see that they had drying plant in case there might be an excessively wet harvest. Perhaps we directed too much attention to providing for a wet harvest and not enough to providing for a wet winter; but we must make that right in future.

Mr. Dillon

Why not grow it in a greenhouse?

Dr. Ryan

Not necessarily. The only source from which strong wheat seed can be got is either from Great Britain or from our own farmers who grew it last year. I am referring to Red Marvel. The wheat known as Wilhelmina can be got from the Continent. This year we did not have enough Red Marvel to supply our own requirements. We must adopt a scheme here to supply this particular wheat seed from internal sources in future. It will be necessary to amend further the cereal legislation, and it is quite probable that an amending Bill may be before this House in the course of the present Session.

Mr. Belton

When the Minister says "cereals," does he mean a Bill for barley or oats?

Dr. Ryan

A Bill for barley, oats, and wheat. We are dealing with the whole three.

Mr. Dillon

What is the Minister going to do?

Dr. Ryan

I will have to explain that when the Bill comes along in due course. I next come to tobacco growing. In 1933, when the restrictions on tobacco growing were relaxed, tobacco to the extent of nearly 1,000 acres was grown. The growers realised 3/- to 6/- per lb. That was a very fine price. The growers did not realise that something would have to be done from many points of view to control the growing of tobacco. In the first place they were only growing pipe-tobacco, and many of them were growing that indifferently. We could only absorb pipe-tobacco here. The intrinsic value of that tobacco was something like 1/- a lb.

Mr. Belton

Fivepence a lb.

Dr. Ryan

Some good tobacco made up to 1/- a lb.

Mr. Belton

Not here. Better get down to realities.

Dr. Ryan

We are on realities. It was sold at the world price; some of it went as much as 1/3 a lb. and some of it as low as ld. a lb. Something had to be done to control the growing of tobacco, because at that price there would be very much more grown than our own consumers could absorb. We could not possibly export it, and at that price there would be a huge loss. There would also be a heavy loss to the revenue.

Mr. Belton

Could the Minister give the revenue loss on the 1,000 acres grown?

Dr. Ryan

I will later. The Deputy can calculate the loss. It is 800 times 1,000 acres at 9/4.

Mr. Dillon

That is nearly £400,000 loss on tobacco.

Dr. Ryan

I am saying that would be the loss if there were 1,000 acres at 800 lbs. to the acre. But I think the yield must have been much lower than 800 lbs. Legislation was introduced with the object of getting tobacco only of the very best quality grown this year. After two years' experience we have now no grower who grows inferior tobacco. Because any grower who grew for the two years in succession inferior tobacco was refused a permit. It is hoped to get home growers to pay more attention to the seed, to the curing and to the curing barns, so that they may eventually produce only tobacco of good quality. If all their tobacco was of good quality, it would be a paying crop, but only when the price they realise is much better than the price they realise at present.

Mr. Belton

Pipe tobacco compared with what class of tobacco?

Dr. Ryan

The tobacco ordinarily imported by the manufacturers here. With regard to potatoes, I am glad to say that we are earning a high reputation for our seed potatoes in a number of foreign countries. The export of our seed potatoes has been increasing for the past few years.

Mr. Belton

Before the Minister leaves tobacco, will he tell us what is the computed revenue loss for the 1935 crop?

Dr. Ryan

Tenpence per lb. is the revenue loss now.

Mr. Belton

What price does the grower get?

Dr. Ryan

The tobacco is first valued at the world price. That is what is called the basic value in the Act and it has varied from about ld. to 1/2. In addition to that, they get part of that 10d. which is remitted from the duty; 5d. goes to the rehandlers for their charges and the other 5d. is divided amongst the growers.

Mr. Belton

What does the grower get for his raw tobacco?

Dr. Ryan

It varies from about 2d. to 1/8.

Mr. Belton

In any case, 5d. of it is from the revenue?

Dr. Ryan

Yes.

Mr. Belton

There is not much profit in that.

Dr. Ryan

It is not a bad crop at all.

Mr. Belton

It would be better to have that land growing grass.

Dr. Ryan

Not at all. The Deputy should try it. It is a fine crop.

Mr. Belton

Or have it growing ferns for bedding.

Dr. Ryan

With regard to flax, unavoidable delay has been experienced in having the Flax Bill circulated, but I hope to have it circulated early next week. I hope to get leave from the Dáil to make a statement so that the farmers may know exactly what we expect from them this season, before the Dáil adjourns.

Mr. O'Neill

It will be too late to grow flax then.

Mr. Dillon

I will make the Minister an offer, if he will not misrepresent me down the country. I will give notice of opposing the Flax Bill on its First Stage so as to give the Minister the opportunity he wants.

Dr. Ryan

The First Stage is over. I suggest that I might be allowed to move the Second Reading and adjourn it until after Easter.

Mr. Dillon

We will agree to that.

Mr. Belton

It would be better to use Meath lands for growing flax than tobacco at this price.

Dr. Ryan

We shall have to wait and see about that. With regard to fruit and vegetables, there is a Commission of Inquiry sitting, and I hope that as a result of their deliberations we may have valuable information compiled and useful recommendations made.

The only other matter with which I want to deal is the question of horse breeding. I was asked a question about this matter to-day, and I promised, in reply, to circulate copies of the Commission's findings to Deputies. These findings are being examined, and, if action is decided upon, it will naturally be necessary for me to come before this House with proposals.

Mr. Dillon

What about peat—wheat, beet and peat?

Dr. Ryan

It does not come within my Department.

Mr. Belton

I thought the Minister was branching off to seed potatoes. Perhaps he forgot?

Dr. Ryan

I said what I had to say about seed potatoes while the Deputy was interrupting.

Mr. Belton

I was interrupting the Minister, if I was interrupting anybody, so that the Minister could not do so. That is all the Minister has to say on that subject? That is a speech in itself.

Dr. Ryan

I will repeat what I said, if the Deputy wishes. It was very short. I said that our seed potatoes were doing well in a number of foreign markets, and that our exports had been increasing gradually for the last few years.

Mr. Belton

Is the Minister aware that there are no seed potatoes available for home growers now?

Dr. Ryan

Maybe they are all gone out.

Mr. Minch

Did the Minister refer to barley or oats at any time?

Dr. Ryan

I said that we were bringing in a new Cereals Bill which will deal chiefly with barley and oats.

Mr. Dillon

I move that the Estimate be referred back for reconsideration, because this is the appropriate time to direct the attention of this House to the fact that Fianna Fáil agricultural policy has reduced the farmers of this country to the condition of slaves and paupers. Prior to the advent of Fianna Fáil to office, the farmers stood upon their own feet, earned their own livings, asked doles from nobody, and asked subsidies or anything of that kind from nobody. All they wanted was to be given a free field and an opportunity to earn their living. To-day there is not a single branch of agricultural activity in which a farmers can engage and make any money unless he is a dole-man of the Government.

Mr. Norton

He will not make much at that.

Mr. Dillon

He will not make much on Government doles, but he will make just enough to live. In addition to that, there are certain Government schemes, and notably the beet sugar scheme, to which I have referred on a previous occasion, into which the farmers have been forced, and which involve them in a kind of slavery for what they get out of it that is an outrage on the agricultural community. There are follows working up to their knees in dirt and muck and wet and misery on Sundays and weekdays, topping and readying beet for the factory, and when the whole account is cast up, they have not got what they used to make out of an acre of turnips, an acre of mangolds, or any other crop they set in the land. I know that the people of this country ought to be prepared to work hard, and, in my experience of them, they are prepared to work hard, but there is no necessity to turn them into cart horses and slaves and to smash their standard of living down to that of the lowest peasant in the whole of Europe.

That is what the tendency is in the policy of the Fianna Fáil Government at present. There are men and boys working up and down this country for 12 and 14 hours a day on the land. Those who are working as agricultural labourers are getting from 15/- to 21/- a week, and those who are working as small farmers on their own land are very frequently getting nothing at all but living on their capital. While that situation is continuing, oceans of money are being poured out of the Exchequer in the form of subsidies and bounties, and, in fact, the dog is eating its own tail, the whole community is becoming progressively poorer and nobody is deriving any benefit from it, except the Germans, who are buying our cattle at half their intrinsic worth, the Spaniards, who are being paid to take our eggs away and the British consumers of butter, who are getting butter at substantially less than is being asked of the poor of this country. I propose to go into those matters in greater detail before I sit down, but that is the general picture presented by the Fianna Fáil agricultural policy since the present Government got into office.

The Minister—I must pay him this tribute—has delivered a statement here to-day in introducing this Estimate which is clearly intended to convey as much information on the subjects on which he saw fit to touch as was at his disposal, but he has carefully eschewed any comparison between the circumstances of the farmers to-day with the circumstances in which they found themselves when he took up office. He dare not do it because the comparison would be between a body of men who were enjoying a modest measure of prosperity, and who were saving something, in 1931, and a body of men who, in the classical words of a Fianna Fáil Deputy, are with their backs to the wall and on the verge of starvation. Deputies will remember that Deputy Dan Corkery, speaking at the Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis this year, said:—

"A commission should be set up to examine useful schemes because this thing has come to breaking point with the people living in the poorer districts. They are barely existing at present and it is the duty of the Government to see that some means be devised by which they will be able to live at least in some kind of comfort."

That is not a quotation from a critic of the Government nor a quotation from somebody who wants to make a point against the Government. It is a quotation from a speech made at the Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis and there was no delegate so forward as to rise and contradict Deputy Corkery. When he sat down there was a heavy silence. There was no rejection of his contention. It was universally admitted on all sides and that must be the epitaph that should be written on the Fianna Fáil agricultural policy in so far as it has affected the farmers of Ireland.

The most biassed and narrow-minded Fianna Fáil Deputy will not contend that these words of Deputy Corkery could have been truly and legitimately applied to the farmers of this country in 1931. Fianna Fáil Deputies must ask themselves what is it that makes them relevant and true in 1936. Some Deputies will reply that it was the outrageous attack of the British Government on the economic life of this country. The whole of the agricultural policy outlined by the Minister is coloured by his reactions to the stupid and imbecile economic war. I want to say a word in that regard because it is true that it is virtually impossible to view agricultural questions on their merits under the shadow of that absurdity. When this private quarrel between President de Valera and the British Government started the President took up the position that his Government would not send the land annuities to Great Britain, that he was going to withhold them.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

How does this arise? Surely that is a matter of policy for the Executive Council.

Mr. Dillon

You mean how does the continuance of the economic was arise on the Estimate for Agriculture?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

How does this discussion of the origin of the economic war arise?

Mr. Dillon

Am I not entitled to urge the Government to wipe out the economic war in order to bring about an improvement in agricultural conditions?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I am not anxious to delimit the Deputy in any way but I do not want a discussion on the economic war all over again.

Mr. Dillon

I do not see how we can avoid a discussion of the general reasons for the existing conditions of the agricultural community. How we can discuss these conditions without advertising to the economic war is something that I cannot see. I have got to refer to the Spanish trade agreement, to the Brazilian market and to the German market, and all these matters arise from the fact that the economic war is in existence.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

That may be so but we cannot go into a discussion of the merits or demerits of the economic war or what should have been done in a given set of circumstances.

Mr. Dillon

I want to say that I ask the President to end the economic war now. I want to explain that up to recently he was in a position to say "On principle, I decline to do that." I want to explain that he himself has deliberately set that principle aside and that now there is no difference between us except on matters of expediency. I want to demonstrate to the Minister for Agriculture that it is more expedient to prosecute the economic war in accordance with my methods than in accordance with his and that if he will prosecute the economic war by the methods by which I suggest it can be prosecuted, at least three-quarters of the subsidies, bounties and quotas required now could be dispensed with to-morrow and the money applied to more useful purposes.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I do not know that I could allow the Deputy to go so far but he can proceed for the present.

Mr. Dillon

So long as the Government sat on a point of principle, there was a bridge between us which could not possibly be crossed by arguments on material considerations.

Mr. Belton

May I ask is it the intention to circumscribe the debate so that the question of the price of agricultural produce or anything that affects the price of agricultural produce, will be ruled out as irrelevant to the debate? I think that the economic war is the essence of the whole debate.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Chair did not say any such thing, but we cannot go over all the proceedings which led up to the economic war.

Mr. Belton

But may we not discuss its results as they affect agricultural prices?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

So far as they have given rise to these schemes, they may be discussed.

Mr. Belton

Good.

Mr. Dillon

May I proceed? So long as there was a question of principle between us, one could readily recognise that that could not be bridged by any arguments founded exclusively on material considerations. So long as the Fianna Fáil Government was saying "On principle, we cannot remit these moneys and are bound by our ideals and principles to devise ways and means of withholding them," the force of certain arguments adduced by us was duly combated, but in the coal-cattle pact of 1936 a completely new situation has arisen. The President first said: "I will not settle it." At a later stage the President said in the Dáil: "I admit I am sending them, but in a very painful way." Now we are devising ways and means to send them. When he spoke on the coal-cattle pact of 1936 Deputy Belton interrupted him and he said to President de Valera: "You have lowered the flag." President de Valera said: "Well, if you like to put it that way, yes, we have lowered the flag.""I do not mind admitting," he said, "that if I were in a stronger position I would not have made this agreement." Now observe the situation that has arisen. The President has now altered his ground and he said: "I wanted to withhold them and I could not. I then tried to devise ways and means of withholding them, but the British Government circumnavigated me. Then under the coal-cattle agreement I entered into a an agreement with the British Government that we would send them an increased number of cattle if they would lower the rate of tariff, and that we would undertake to send so many cattle at the new rates of tariff as would mean our continuing to send over to Great Britain the entire sum claimed by them in the land annuities." There the President and the Executive Council were actually devising ways and means with the British Government to convey the land annuities to Great Britain.

When that stage is reached, we have reached a point where the quarrel between the President and the British Government is as to what is the most convenient way of sending over the land annuities. They are actually negotiating as to what is the best way to send them over. If you have made up your mind to send over the land annuities, or say you are still unwilling to send them and that you are only finding out the most convenient way to send them, I say by far the most convenient way is by cheque. Instead of having an elaborate system of bounties, subsidies and drawbacks, all you need to do is to write a cheque once a month. You have this additional advantage, that instead of making a tacit protest you can send over a Minister—a different one every month —with the cheque and he can make a formal protest after the delivery of each cheque. There is no necessity to yield on principle. You can keep on renewing the protest as often as you send over a Minister with the cheque. Furthermore, if we are to judge by pronouncements made by British Ministers in public—notably the Attorney-General, speaking at Southampton— the British are not interested primarily in the amount they receive. They are primarily interested in receiving a discharge from the Irish Government of the allegation that the British set out to defraud the Irish people.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Now!

Mr. Dillon

I pass from that. It is highly probable that if we sent over the money by cheque every month, not only would we relieve our farmers of the inconvenience of tariffs, bounties, quotas and so forth, but we would also prepare the ground for negotiations founded on the question purely of what it is reasonable to ask this country to pay on foot of a financial arrangement entered into almost contemporaneously with a financial agreement that was made by Mr. Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minister of England, when he went over to Washington in 1924 as Chancellor of the Exchequer and made an arrangement that has so completely broken down that Great Britain is not sending even a token payment to America, not because she denies the money is due——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy now is surely travelling outside the Estimate.

Mr. Dillon

Surely, I am entitled to ask that he settle the economic war.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy has asked that in a variety of ways, and he should now go on to deal with the Estimate which the Minister has introduced.

Mr. Dillon

I submit that the Estimate offers an occasion for the discussion of the policy of the Department of Agriculture on the widest possible lines, and I suggest that for the Department of Agriculture to be carrying the entire economic war on their own backs is intolerable. I am asking the Minister to use his influence so as to have that burden transferred in some way from the Agricultural Vote, on which it exclusively depends at present, to the Exchequer.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I have allowed the Deputy to travel very far afield. The Deputy was proceeding to make analogies between the debt owing by Britain to America and the debt which this country is supposed to owe to Britain. If the Deputy proceeds on those lines, he will draw a reply from the opposite side and the discussion will be widened to an extent far beyond what is necessary. The Deputy appreciates that matters of this kind are purely matters of Executive policy and should not be discussed on this Estimate. I have allowed him to go into the question of the economic war as far as it is permissible to do so.

Mr. Dillon

I have nothing further to say on that matter. I have made my position clear. It seems to me greatly to militate against the usefulness of a discussion on agricultural policy that we should be carrying on under the shadow of this absurdity to which I have referred. I have indicated one method—an effective method and one which conflicts in no way with the principles of the Executive Council—whereby that shadow could be dissipated, and whereby we could deal with the problems raised by this Vote on their merits under their several heads, and not in an atmosphere of panic or a war atmosphere, such as the Government has sought to create and has, indeed, successfully created. The Minister's speech has revealed some extraordinary things, and, perhaps, the most extraordinary thing of all is that the Minister has learned sense. I can only hope that that infection will spread to his colleagues and supporters. He revealed that licences for export of cattle to Great Britain are now worth little more than the paper on which they are written because the market is of such size that we have not enough cattle to fill it. He warns us that anybody who gets these licences and does not use them is doing the community a very substantial injury because it may militate against us gravely in the future. How? Does the Minister disagree with Senator Connolly, who praises God that this accured cattle market which took 100 years to build up can be torn down in 10 months? Has the policy of the Government changed? Does the Minister regard it as a matter of regret——

Dr. Ryan

Will the Deputy not accept the reason I gave?

Mr. Dillon

What reason?

Dr. Ryan

I know the Deputy had his speech prepared and I do not like to put him off it. I gave a reason why the non-using of these licences would militate against us, and it was not the reason which the Deputy is giving. That may be his reason.

Mr. Dillon

If we fail to deliver the goods in respect of the cattle quota at the present time, our cattle quotas will be diminished in the future.

Dr. Ryan

I did not say that.

Mr. Dillon

Does the Minister think that that would be a misfortune?

Dr. Ryan

I do not think it would occur.

Mr. Dillon

Does the Minister think that that would be a misfortune?

Dr. Ryan

I did not say that.

Mr. Dillon

Does he think it would be a misfortune?

Dr. Ryan

It is, I think, rather unfair, when I gave a reason why the adoption of this course might militate against us, that the Deputy should say that what I had in mind was a different thing.

Mr. Dillon

I wonder am I being unfair or am I merely discovering the truth?

Dr. Ryan

If the Deputy wants to misrepresent me, let him go ahead.

Mr. Dillon

Far from it. May I put it this way: The Minister holds the view that it would be a misfortune for this country if its quota for live stock exports to Great Britain were reduced?

Dr. Ryan

I did not say that.

Mr. Dillon

I want to ask the Minister this question: Does he think it would be a misfortune for this country if its quota for live stock exports to Great Britain were in the future to be reduced by Britain?

Dr. Ryan

That would depend on the number of cattle we had.

Mr. Dillon

The Minister is not prepared to answer that question affirmatively or negatively. He does not know.

Dr. Ryan

I say the Deputy wants to misrepresent me.

Mr. Corry

Let the Deputy make his own speech.

Mr. Dillon

Deputy Corry has wisely intervened on the Minister's behalf and has told him to keep his mouth shut. The Minister does not present a dignified appearance with Deputy Corry as his counsellor.

Dr. Ryan

I hope I am more dignified than the Deputy.

Mr. Dillon

The Minister is right in saying that any licence for the export of fat cattle should be used lest our quota for at cattle be reduced in future, which would be a catastrophe. This interesting fact remains—it is a fact which seems to be overlooked in connection with fat cattle at the present time—that the prices we are getting on the British market are the prices at which the Germans are buying our cattle and the prices at which every other country is buying our cattle, with the result that, in fact, we are paying the land annuities not only to Great Britain but to Germany and every other country which purchases our cattle. Surely the time has come when the Minister for Agriculture should realise that, whether it is worth paying the land annuities to Great Britain or not, the game is not worth the candle when we are paying the land annuities to Great Britain, Germany, and the dealers of every other country who choose to come over here and buy a cheap lot of cattle.

In passing, the Minister dealt with cheese production. I think it is a great pity we have concentrated so exclusively on factory cheese. The factory cheese which is being produced here is as good as the factory cheese being produced anywhere else, but factory cheese is a dreadful imitation of what cheese should be. Nobody who has any taste for cheese can eat factory cheese. It is beastly stuff and that applies to Canadian, United States and Irish factory cheese. Some people in this country have gone into cheese-making on the same lines as those pursued in Germany, England, Italy and, to a less extent, France. There are emerging in one or two districts here cheeses of quite distinctive character of the Cheddar type and one or two of the Continental types. If that develops, it will be a national agricultural asset. My suggestion to the Minister is that he should not rest content with increasing the product of the cheese factory, because I do not think, in that, he is providing us with a really valuable asset at all. If our factory cheese is going to come into free and open competition with the factory cheese of the mass producers of the United States, our factory cheese will be up the spout. The Minister would, however, provide us with a great asset if he developed a local cheese which would compete with any cheese of the world, because it would be a luxury for which foreigners, if they liked it, would pay a fancy price simply because they liked it. I suggest that the Minister should set on foot some scheme for subsidising the production of cheeses of that character.

It would not be at all expensive, because once the thing got under way it would cease to require a subsidy, and would be able to stand on its own feet. Encouragement to a cheese production business of that kind would be extremely valuable, and would bring a fresh cash crop, as it might be so described, into houses of people all over the country, more particularly into houses and districts where there are no co-operative creameries, where co-operative creameries ought not to be built, that is, the congested areas, where the milk produced should be fed to the children of the house in one form or another.

The Minister also referred to the butter situation. My complaint with regard to the butter situation is this, that our subsidy scheme is operating in this country in such a fashion that we are selling our butter in Great Britain at 9d. to 10d. per lb. while our own people have to pay 1/5. That seems to me to be a thoroughly unsound principle. If butter, owing to temporary world conditions, requires a subsidy, and I think it does in order to make the thing sufficiently economic, and to make it possible to maintain it, the cheap butter made available by the subsidy should be for our own people first, and if there remains a surplus, after the capacity of our people to consume it has been exhausted, it could be sold cheaper to our external buyers. I ask the House to bear in mind that it seems to me to be extravagance to be paying a subsidy to raise the price of milk and, at the same time, to be pursuing a political policy which destroys the value of the calf. A cow is, to a certain extent, a factory, and if you adopt the language of the sugar beet factory in each campaign: "a cow produces a calf and so much milk," that is the fruit of the cows' lactation campaign. If you increase the price of milk and destroy the price of the calf you are where you began, and the whole subsidy is gone for nothing. I suggest that what we should try to do is to make the calves as valuable as they were before the Minister came into office, and ensure that any subsidy subsequently given for milk production would be given to the producer of the milk, and to milk production for the benefit of our own people. Remember, when you increase the price of the calf to the general value of the cows total production, it might not be as expensive as the figures before us at the present time, while it would make it possible to make available milk products for our own people, with substantial economics hereafter, even in public health institutions which the country is maintaining for under-nourished children and people suffering as a result of failure to get adequate supplies of such food as milk and butter.

The Minister was proud of his report on bacon exports and pig products exports. While he was speaking I noticed Deputies behind him smirking at the achievement. Not one of them knew of course the reason for the increase in our exports of bacon. The reason is that the British Government told us they would take so much more bacon from us. If we were in a position to supply still more bacon, and if we were on terms of cordial trade relationship with Great Britain, we could have increased our exports of bacon substantially above the figures at which they at present stand. It is only because we have pursued the insane policy of Fianna Fáil during the past four years, that we find ourselves now embarrassed to find a sufficient number of pigs to supply the British market. That is only that scrap of the British market that the British Government threw to us without any negotiations or pressure of any kind. All the Minister has to do is to ask them for an increase and it is gladly given to him by the British Government. He told us that the quota on the British market had been substantially increased. It might be further increased if the Minister had the gumption to go and get it. The entire improvement in the position of the pig-raising population in this country is due to the fact that the British market is prepared to take more bacon from us than ever before, and as many more pigs. In addition to being able to send them bacon under the pig marketing regulations in Great Britain we can send them an unlimited quantity of store pigs. After those pigs have been a month or six weeks in Great Britain they are recognised by the British Bacon and Pig Marketing Boards as British pigs, and are sold to curers by English farmers who bought them from us at market price, which accounts for the comparatively economic price that obtains for pigs in this country.

Let me remind Deputies that but for the antics of the Fianna Fáil Minister for Agriculture pigs would be not only paying an economic price at the present time, but would be a mighty valuable asset to the farmers, because owing to the ridiculous and absurd cereals legislation which requires me to take my oats out of my own land and sell them to the first miller who will take them, maybe in Cork or Kilkenny, I have to buy oats grown in Kilkenny, shipped to Sligo and milled there and then railed back to me, and I have to pay 8/- per cwt. for maize meal mixture, while British farmers can buy equivalent feeding-stuff for 5/-. It is hard to assess what difference that makes in the fattening of a pig. It may be safely and conservatively said that on these figures the British farmer has 15/- more for each pig he sells than the Irish farmer. Farmers in this country may well realise what the pig industry would be to our people if the tax put upon them by the imbecile cereals legislation of the Fianna Fáil Government was withdrawn. I take this opportunity to appeal to the Minister to end the idiotic maize meal mixture legislation. It has not improved the price of oats. It has not increased the price of barley by one penny. Far from it. It left a vast surplus of barley unsaleable on the market this year, and but for the fact that Arthur Guinness intervened chaos would have broken out. It has increased the price of feeding stuffs of pig producers selling in the markets of the world by 3/- a cwt. I ask any rational Deputy, what advantage is there in the maize meal mixture? I say that no advantage has accrued and that farmers here are charged £3 per ton more for feeding stuffs used for the production of agricultural produce that is being sold in competition with people who can buy the cheaper feeding stuff.

The Minister went on to tell what the Bacon and Pigs Marketing Board was doing. Let me say that no body of men could have made a greater mess of the job they were charged to do. They burnt their fingers, they broke the shins of the pig producers, and generally turned somersaults with the pig business throughout the country. They have now done what most rational people in the pig industry knew before the Bacon Board started, settled down to rational methods. I do not think there is any use dragging up the absurd mistakes into which they fell, dragging out the purchase of pork that was hawked round the country, put into cold store as pork, sold at one-quarter of its value to the curers, and then thrown out as unfit for conversion into bacon. However, what is done is done and there is no use crying over it. They have probably learned a lesson from bitter experience which will prevent messes of a similar kind. But the Minister ought to tell us how much money they lost in the transactions which took place in the three weeks to which he referred. The Minister has consistently sought to shake off responsibility for the Pig and Bacon Marketing Boards. He cannot do so. He has power to require all relevant information.

Dr. Ryan

It will be all published by the board some time at the end of the year, and it will be found that what the Deputy is saying is balderdash— nothing in it.

Mr. Dillon

The Minister and I can stand up in front of one another in this House and shout "balderdash." That will not get the Minister or me very much further.

An Ceann Comhairle

Nor the debate.

Mr. Dillon

Therefore, I think that that kind of interjection is not the way to approach this question. If the Minister desires to read what I am saying he will find that he has machinery under the Pigs Act, and that I put a provision in the Act to make it available. I insisted in Committee that he should take powers to administer interrogatories to the board whenever he wanted to. I gave him the necessary powers to provide himself with effective answers to the allegations that I am now making, and he is afraid to use them, because he knows that the allegations that I am making are true.

Dr. Ryan

The Deputy is always prepared to make allegations against people who, he knows, cannot answer him.

Mr. Dillon

The Minister can answer me. The Minister has the power to ask these gentlemen to set down in full all the relevant particulars to answer any statement that I make in this House, and he will not use it.

Dr. Ryan

They have something else to do.

Mr. Dillon

I have made these allegations on three separate occasions, and I have challenged the Minister to administer all necessary interrogatories to this board to controvert the truth of what I am saying. He has not used those powers, because he knows that if he did they would confirm every word that I am saying. Perhaps, as the Chair has suggested, we may now pass from that. The Minister hopes that this board will, in due course, improve the quality of Irish bacon. Of all things on God's earth that the board should not have anything to do with is the power to interfere with the quality of Irish bacon. In the same breath as the Minister said that, he told us that Irish bacon was of such excellent quality that it was getting top price on the British market in competition with bacon from over the whole world. If it is, cannot the Minister leave well enough alone, and not be sending in his inspectors to interfere with the bacon curers of this country?

Dr. Ryan

Why should we not improve the quality still more?

Mr. Dillon

For the simple reason that everything the Minister has touched since he came into office he has played the devil with it. With the best intentions in the world, the Minister will go rambling into the bacon factories of this country and chaos will be the result.

Dr. Ryan

I am not going. The Board may.

Mr. Dillon

I would remind Deputies of this that the Minister will go in with the best intentions in the world. No bull ever wandered into a china shop with more good will than the Minister into the bacon factories, but no bull has ever left devastation behind comparable to that which the Minister will leave behind if he interferes with our bacon curers.

Dr. Ryan

I would again remind the Deputy that I have no authority to go into the bacon factories. That is a matter for the board.

Mr. Dillon

What I am saying to the Minister is that the board is the creature of his Department, and I want him if it has the power to interfere with the methods of the bacon curers which have so far justified themselves as to secure for Irish bacon top price in the only market in which Irish bacon has to compete, to forbid the board categorically from attempting to interfere with the methods of our bacon curers. If he cannot do that under the powers that he has then I suggest to him that he should introduce legislation prohibiting the board from interfering with the methods of our Irish bacon curers.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy may not advocate legislation on an Estimate.

Mr. Dillon

I agree, and I regret having done so. I was led into that indiscretion by the challenge of the Minister.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy should not be easily led.

Mr. Dillon

I seldom am. I have another criticism to make of the Pigs and Bacon Board. When we assented to the principle underlying the Pigs and Bacon Act our principal desire was to secure that we should have long term prices fixed. The great difficulty in the pig business in this country and in every other country always has been the rise and fall in prices and supplies. The object of all legislation has been to try and level-out prices and supplies so as to get a constant supply for the factories and a reasonably constant price for the farmers of the country, more particularly in order to secure that, if a farmer bred pigs and reckoned that he would have them fit for sale as bacon pigs at the end of five months, he would have some idea of what he was going to get for them when he put them on the market, so that in one period he would not make a fortune on his pigs and in another period lose a fortune. The whole object was to tell the pig producer what he would get for his fat pigs five months hence. Actually, the Pigs Marketing Board, in fixing the price for pigs, have made five alterations at least in the price in three months. I allege that one of the price alterations was made at the instance of the Minister for Agriculture in order to cover up the additional charges which he had to impose upon the pig producers of the country by increasing the cereal content of the maize-meal mixture to 50 per cent.

Dr. Ryan

I have already denied that in the Dáil.

Mr. Dillon

Of course, there always has been a difficulty about this glut of pigs arising in the autumn, and of a comparative scarcity presenting itself in the spring and summer. I suggest to the Minister that he should not despair and say that there is no method of dealing with that problem. There is a method and the Minister should make it known quite definitely. It is this: that pigs produced in the autumn and spring are going to make approximately the same price, but that in the period extending, say, from November to June they will definitely be higher and for the whole of that period, whereas in the period extending from June to November they will definitely be lower and for the whole of that period. By doing that he may not succeed in producing an absolutely constant flow, but he will so far reduce the ebb and flow of supply and prices as to eliminate the greater part of the evil. The Minister cannot hope to do that in a month or six months. The only effective way of doing it is to bring home to the minds of the people a new picture of a fairly even trend in pig prices and supply to supplant the traditional belief in the minds of the people that pig prices will fluctuate as they have hitherto, and that it was perfectly legitimate and sound economics to jump into pigs when you had a surplus of potatoes to dispose of. If the people are made realise that they can put their potatoes by and keep them to use as foodstuffs later in the year: that it is as easy to keep small potatoes as it is to keep big potatoes, and if you can persuade them that they should not allow their farming economy to be dominated exclusively by weather conditions, but that there are ample resources at their disposal to offset the weather conditions that have hitherto guided them in managing their affairs, the situation can be remedied.

There is another important question and one that, in my opinion, has in it the material for a terrible injustice on a very deserving body of citizens, and one, too, that is calculated to inflict irreparable damage on the agricultural economy of the country—that is the attitude the Minister takes up towards the pig jobbers of Ireland. The pig dealers of this country have discharged a most useful office for generations, and in the existing circumstances they are in the position to serve a more useful function than they have ever served before. They have taken off the market of this country large numbers of pigs, and I ask Deputies to bear this carefully in mind, that the bulk of the pigs they have taken off the Irish markets are pigs that the Irish bacon factories would not touch. They have taken what the Minister has described as the "cutter" off the markets, and not infrequently they have got a price for the "cutter" in England as good— sometimes a better price—as that paid for a grade A1 pig in this country. The reason for that is that the pig jobbers' demand has been a flexible demand: it can be called off or expanded as the situation in Ireland requires.

Take the situation to which the Minister refers and which so greatly embarrassed the Pigs Marketing Board some months ago in Monaghan, Donegal and Cavan. There they had a mass of Ulster white pigs brought dead to the markets. That was the problem that was before them. The Pigs Marketing Board went rambling in there and got bogged. If the Minister had been in close touch with the Pig Jobbers' Association and had their confidence, or if they had his confidence, all he need have done was to send to the Pig Jobbers' Association and say: "Look here, I want you to do something which will help us all. Put every man you have got in Monaghan, Cavan and Donegal; buy the pigs there and dispose of them through your connections in England. It may mean a little bit of a loss, but it is urgently necessary. Now, do the job and come back to me if you have got involved in any serious loss." The Pig Jobbers' Association could have easily lifted that surplus off the market without any material loss. Possibly all that would have been necessary would be to give them a fee to get the job done, and every one of the pigs would have passed into consumption and they would be taken off the market.

The Pigs Marketing Board never succeeded in doing that. Some of the pork converted into bacon is still in cold store and is complicating the problem of selling the bacon that is being manufactured at the present time. The pig jobbers, I repeat, would have dealt with that problem and would be prepared to deal with similar problems in future. The tendency the Pigs Marketing Board and the Bacon Marketing Board are exhibiting is to hand the pig producers over body and soul to the factories and let the factories fix the price. People may say that the Pigs Marketing Board is fixing prices. What does that board consist of? Representatives of the factories and producers, presided over by a chairman appointed by the Minister. I freely admit I was taken in on the Committee Stage. I thought the producers' representatives would have the courage and intelligence to stand up for those whom they were supposed to represent on the board, and, if they did and presented an unanimous judgment as to what the appropriate price should be, the fixing of the price would be thrown back on the chairman, and if the chairman went wrong we could have demanded of the Minister to call on the chairman to account for his stewardship, and so would have dealt with the matter.

In every price that has been fixed— some prices were so ludicrously inadequate that they had to be changed in two or three weeks—we find the producers' representatives bleated an assent and in these cases the board's personnel unanimously accepted the price. If that is going to happen in future the factories will do just as they please with the pig producer. I want to leave in the open market the pig jobbers, who will be prepared to compete against the factory prices, purchase the pigs, ship them abroad and sell them elsewhere, and so force the bacon factories to drive the prices up. Under the existing circumstances, when prices are being fixed by the Pigs Marketing Board, it is the duty of the Minister to demand of the bacon curers their balance sheets for his scrutiny, whether they are private or public companies. I do not say that he should seek to publish these figures, because some of them are private companies, but if he finds that on the prices fixed by the Pigs Marketing Board and the Bacon Marketing Board the bacon factories are making excessive profits, then he ought to demand an explanation of how it is that they have so ineffectively discharged their duty as to leave the pig producer losing money at certain periods of the year while the bacon factories are coming as they never coined before.

The last feature in connection with the pig jobbers is this, that they are the men who have maintained the fairs and markets in all the rural towns. On those fairs and markets depends the prosperity of hundreds and thousands of merchants; on the continued prosperity of the merchants depends the livelihood of thousands of labouring men all over Ireland. If the pig jobbers are swept out of business, every pig fair in Ireland will collapse and the pigs will simply be carted to the factories to be bought at whatever price the factories please to give. That will react on the farmers and on the towns. I urge most strongly that any repetition of the language employed by the chairman of the Pigs Marketing Board on a recent occasion, when he indicated it was the policy of the board rather to eliminate the pig jobber than to concentrate the dealing with pigs in the factory, should be severely censured by the Minister and categorically contradicted by Deputies in the House.

Now we come to the sheet anchor, the bulwark, of the Fianna Fáil policy, wheat. We are told that wheat could not be planted this year because it was too went in winter, and we are told it is very likely they will not be able to plant whatever wheat they have got in the spring because it is too wet. I suggested we should grow the wheat in a glass-case and that would solve a good many of our difficulties, but that did not appeal to the Minister. We planted 163,000 acres of wheat last year and reaped it. What did it cost us? It cost us £1,500,000. That is what the wheat scheme is costing this country. Flour to-day is 10/- per sack dearer in Saorstát Eireann than it can be purchased in Great Britain—and that is a very conservative figure. It is more than 10/- a sack dearer here than in Great Britain. The consumption of flour here has been conservatively estimated at 2,800,000 sacks; I believe the figure is nearer 3,000,000 sacks. Suppose we say 2,800,000 sacks, the wheat scheme, the Minister's cereal policy, is costing this country in respect of flour £1,400,000, on the Minister's own figures, but I believe you can legitimately say it is costing £1,500,000. The farmer is getting a price for wheat which, in my opinion, is not an economic price, taking into consideration the burden on the fertility of the soil which the wheat crop is. Farmers who are growing wheat are ruining their land; they are not cultivating it.

I do not know what the millers are getting out of this transaction, but I want to put this point to the House. There is a certain miller operating in this country and he has a mill in Liverpool and a mill in Ireland. He is getting ex-mill 10/- to 11/- per sack more for the flour he is milling in Ireland than he is getting for the flour he is milling in England. In each quota period that miller is allowed to mill in this country 36,000 sacks of flour, so that he is getting for the flour he mills in Ireland £16,000 in each quota period more than he would get from milling the same flour in Great Britain. Is it any wonder that a policy of that kind should be popular with the people who are milling flour? If I were a miller it would be popular with me, but I am glad to think that there are some millers in this country far-sighted enough to realise that, though there are profits to be snatched from transactions of that character, in the long run, looking at it from the national point of view and feeling as I feel that we have all got to sink or swim with the country, no patriotic Irishman desires to see a scheme of that character continue as a characteristic of Irish life, or Irish industry, because it is calculated to undermine and upset the entire agricultural economy of the country on which the prosperity of this country ultimately depends.

May I point out that we have enthusiastic wheat advocates here who have never advanced any solid argument to justify the growing of wheat, with or without a subsidy? May I ask those who have somehow assured themselves that we were growing wheat in order to render ourselves independent of outside supplies, if we had attained last year the position where we would be independent of all outside supplies and had so arranged things that that was a necessary part of our economic life, what would have happened in a year when weather conditions would have prevented us from providing more that 21½ per cent. of our requirements? May I ask would we not have bought Canadian wheat at one-third of the price we are paying here? I invite Deputy Corry to deal with that question.

Mr. Corry

If I did, I would be as mad as the Deputy.

Mr. Dillon

Well, perhaps I am not as mad as the Deputy. However, if the Deputy will not deal with wheat, I invite him to deal with tobacco. God be with the day when President de Valera was interviewing the Evening Herald on that subject. I am sure that this House will remember those halcyon days when the President said that he would consider the matter very fully, and that he had come to the conclusion that that matter ought to be withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the Revenue Commissioners. He said that he foresaw a loss. With his well-known prudence, he said that he saw that it might involve a loss, but that he was satisfied that the increased benefits to the community would amply compensate the Revenue Commissioners for any loss that might ensue, and that he was satisfied that the Fianna Fáil Party should and would give their united support to the enlightened policy that was being brought forward by Deputy Matt. O'Reilly at the time. Deputy Matt. O'Reilly came in and suggested that tobacco should be relieved of Revenue duty. Of course, that was turned down at the time; but then the present Minister for Finance came into office and turned it down, and Deputy Matt. O'Reilly nearly went into hysterics. The Day—“Der Tag”— had arrived, and tobacco was going to be released from Revenue—the great gold-mine—and, by jove, for the first year all Excise duty was to be taken off tobacco and we were getting 5/- and 6/- for our tobacco. Everything was lovely. We could afford to fight forty economic wars on that issue. But then, suddenly, Fianna Fáil got sense—not, however, before they had succeeded in squandering £400,000 on the production of 1,000 acres of tobacco. If, in every place that these unhappy men were led into follies of that character, it is going to cost £500,000 to dig them out of it, how is the Government going to draw them out of it? There is a dozen of them, at any rate, and if each of them makes a mistake, it will take £6,000,000 to take them out of it. Of course, tobacco has gone up the spout. I think the lowest price paid for tobacco is 4d. or 5d., and that does not include the rehandling and, of course, even at that, it is not worth growing. It has become a complete frost and will shortly go into the limbo of all the other schemes of the Fianna Fáil Party.

Now, let us take the case of seed potatoes. It was due to the foresight of that remarkable man, the former Minister for Agriculture, that that project was set on foot, and there was never any subsidy connected with it, but only hard work.

Mr. Belton

I think there was a subsidy also.

Mr. Dillon

Not at the beginning There is one now. Anybody who has seeds for sale now has a gold-mine. They have to grow them under the stringent restrictions imposed by the Department. We all know that they are producing something that is of advantage to the country, but will the Minister tell us that, with the main crop shortage in England at the present time, we are getting our share? There are oceans going into Ulster at the moment. Is it the fact that the British are excluding our potatoes and, if so, should the Minister not open negotiations with the British Government to allow us to get some share of the filling up of the gap between British requirements and British supplies? If that were done, it would help our farmers, who have, if not a surplus, at least good quantities of main crop on hand. I could not leave this question of the Fianna Fáil policy without touching on the peat scheme. Do Deputies not remember when the cattle were going to be swept away— the sway of the base, bloody and brutal Saxon was to be swept away—and wheat, beet and peat were to be substituted? Tobacco is swept away already, and wheat and beet are not so comfortable as was expected. I wonder what is thought of the peat scheme now?

An Ceann Comhairle

I suggest to the Deputy that he should get off the turf.

Mr. Dillon

Well, Sir, it is just as well, perhaps.

Mr. Corry

The Deputy cannot back a winner.

Mr. Dillon

At any rate, Sir, I am happy to think that an opportunity will be given at no far distant date to return to that question. Apart from that, however, what about the Spanish trade agreement? The Minister was shocked when I brought this matter up before. He said that I was disparaging and sabotaging the efforts that had been made to provide new markets. We understood that the arrangement was that we were to import our oranges from Spain and send our eggs in return. Has the Minister got tired of sending eggs to Spain without getting money for them? Is he prepared to renew the Spanish trade agreement, or is it as attractive as it used to be; or has he come to realise that we were sending the best of eggs to Spain for half their intrinsic worth and taking oranges that were, to say the least of it, the sweepings of the market, as compared with the oranges that could be bought in other ways? I have no hesitation in saying that, comparing the Valencia oranges coming here, which we had to go down on our knees to get, and in return for which we had to send our best eggs at half-price to Spain, with oranges that could be bought in the open market, these oranges were the sweepings of the market.

Mr. Belton

Who were the members of the company?

An Ceann Comhairle

Has the Minister for Agriculture anything to do with that matter?

Mr. Dillon

Yes, Sir, he has. Oranges are included in this Estimate in exchange for eggs. This is just another of the Minister's markets that has gone astray.

An Ceann Comhairle

I was under the impression that the trade agreement with Spain is a matter for the Department of Industry and Commerce, but I accept the Deputy's statement that it is otherwise.

Mr. Dillon

My thesis, Sir, is that eggs are closely related to hens, and that hens come under the Department of the Minister for Agriculture. Hens can hardly be regarded as factories and, therefore, I suggest, cannot come under the 300 factories, or so, alleged to have been set up by the Minister for Industry and Commerce.

An Ceann Comhairle

Would the Deputy relate oranges to hens?

Mr. Dillon

Yes, Sir—indirectly from eggs. I do not propose to go into the personnel of that company. The company to which I was referring was the Irish Iberian Company, formed for the purpose of undertaking trade relations with Spain. Doubtless Deputy Briscoe will tell us all about it. He will tell us that those people have been connected with Irish firms all their lives. He will tell us they never earned a penny in Great Britain, or acted as agents for Great Britain, and he will explain how none of them would touch a penny of British gold. We will all hear this with admiration. I will not go into that now, as I am not as well versed in these things as Deputy Briscoe.

Mr. Briscoe

How does the Deputy come to that conclusion?

Mr. Dillon

I leave that to the Deputy. Meantime will the Minister tell us if the Spanish agreement has been renewed?

Mr. Briscoe

I have no connection with a baby farm in the north of Ireland.

Mr. Dillon

I do not understand that.

Mr. Briscoe

The Deputy does.

Mr. Dillon

What is the baby farm? What does the Deputy mean?

An Ceann Comhairle

Better keep to the Estimate.

Mr. Dillon

Will Deputy Briscoe elaborate his reference to a baby farm in the north of Ireland?

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy will not.

Mr. Dillon

Perhaps the Deputy will send me a line. The last time he sent me a line he enclosed £5.

Mr. Briscoe

I will send the Deputy a line all right. The Deputy has heard of taking in apprentices and turning them out when——

An Ceann Comhairle

Order!

Mr. Dillon

I shall await the Deputy's information. The next question I want to ask is what has happened in Brazil? I understood a market was being opened up there for our livestock as they were embarking in a scheme similar to that in the Argentine. Now, I understand, Brazil has withdrawn from this country most-favoured-nation treatment, and there is danger of their demand for cattle being diverted to the Scottish market. I want to know who is responsible for that.

It is interesting to note that the reductions that have been made in expenditure have been made particularly at the expense of agriculture. That seems to be the invariable practice of the present Government. Whenever anybody is to lose, the farmer is selected. However, this fact emerges and will develop as time goes on that the Fianna Fáil Party is coming to learn what we tried to teach them, that you cannot build up prosperity in this country on sweated factories. You cannot build up prosperity in this country with chancers and fly-by-nights who are in the economic life of this country only in the hope that they will get something out of it. The only way to build up prosperity in this country is to have a prosperous agricultural community, with a sound industrial life and industrial development which will provide a decent livelihood for everyone engaged in it. The only hope of a sound agricultural community in this country is mixed farming in which livestock plays an indispensable part.

There was a time when the Minister held up to public odium any persons in this country who bread livestock or sold them. He is gradually coming to realise that that was the folly of ignorance, and he now knows that, through his own reckless experiments he has so depleted the cattle stock of this country, we are no longer able to supply the fragment of the British market which Great Britain has voluntarily given us. He has discovered that through his own carelessness and folly we have a situation in which we are not able to supply that part of the British market which the British themselves voluntarily gave us without any negotiations from us. He has discovered that although there is virtually no limit to the quantity of eggs that could be exported to Great Britain he has by his own folly made the production of eggs so uneconomic that people have gone out of them. He talked to-day of resorting to strong measures to induce people to engage in the production of eggs. There is no need for strong measures; all that is necessary to be done is to restore reasonable production and make it easy to ship that production. People want to dole; they want only to live out of production. Eggs will command the normal price when there is no hugger-mugger and no secret arrangement by which some are sent to Germany and some are sent to Spain and there is a rake-off for this one and that. If eggs are allowed to go to their ordinary market there will be plenty of eggs for sale. The Minister deplored the scarcity of eggs, while at that moment he was shipping eggs to Spain for half their worth. Now that scheme has broken down, and because of its inutility it is going to be abandoned.

There are one or two other matters that I want to refer to in conclusion. We spent £7,700 last year on wheat publicity alone. We had publicity telling farmers what to grow. There were large posters put up at railway stations and in post offices with the injunction: "Grow more wheat." And we are told wheat is an economic crop to grow, and that it should attract every farmer in the country. Either of these statements is untrue. Wheat is an economic crop or else you are fooling the farmers, as I believe you are, into undermining their land. Though the farmer sells his wheat, as I admit he is going to do at a price, still you are doing something that this country will not recover from for generations. I do not see why there should be an Estimate for £100,000 for the purchase and storage of eggs. The Minister says our exports to England are falling. Eggs exported by other countries to England are not falling. Do not imagine that the fall in our exports of eggs to Britain is because they are producing more eggs them selves than ever before. In 1933 Denmark exported to Great Britain £2,511,551 worth of eggs. In that year we exported to Great Britain £998,000 worth of eggs. In 1932 Denmark sent to Great Britain £2,971,000 worth of eggs, and we sent £1,694,000 worth of eggs.

Mr. Briscoe

How much was the fall in each case?

Mr. Dillon

As between those two years the exports of Denmark fell by £400,000 and the exports of Ireland fell by £700,000.

Mr. Briscoe

Why did Denmark's exports fall?

Mr. Dillon

Denmark's exports fell because the consumption of foreign eggs in Great Britain was falling: they were producing more. Denmark was not an Ottawa country; we were, and through the incompetence of this unfortunate Minister who is sitting in front of us—I do him an injustice there, and I withdraw that, because he did make a settlement in Ottawa and it was the President "bust" it up; he did come home in advance of time, rejoicing, to tell the President he had made a settlement and made a good deal for this country, but he was sent back again with his tail between his legs.

Dr. Ryan

I did not come home.

Mr. Dillon

Well you are here now.

Dr. Ryan

I did not come home with a settlement, and the Deputy knows that.

Mr. Dillon

No; you would get "bet" out of Government Buildings if you settled without President de Valera's permission. The Vice-President of the Executive Council came out on the streets of Ottawa and told all the newspaper correspondents——

An Ceann Comhairle

It is not in this Estimate.

Mr. Dillon

Deputy Briscoe asked me why the exports of Denmark had fallen.

An Ceann Comhairle

The fact that Deputy Briscoe interjects a remark does not bring this into order.

Mr. Dillon

My submission is that the reason why our exports fell more heavily than Denmark's exports fell was because we made no agreement at Ottawa.

Mr. Briscoe

I did not ask that question. I asked why did the exports of eggs from Denmark fall.

Mr. Dillon

I say I do not charge the Minister with failure——

An Ceann Comhairle

Agreement at Ottawa, actual or alleged, has nothing to do with this Vote.

Mr. Dillon

It has something to do with the fall in the exports of eggs to Great Britain.

Mr. Corry

Not a bit.

Mr. Briscoe

Why did the exports from Denmark fall?

Mr. Dillon

The facts in regard to this are sufficiently fresh in the minds of Deputies to warrant my passing from the subject in deference to your suggestion, Sir, without submitting further points of order to justify me in continuing to deal with it. The exports of eggs in the case of Ireland have steadily fallen, and in 1935 amounted to not more than £711,337, which was £1,180,000 less than in 1934, but the imports of eggs into Great Britain between 1934 and 1935 had increased by £700,000. Now, if it were true that our exports of eggs to Great Britain were falling only because and in the same measure as Great Britain's total imports were falling, our egg exports should have risen as between 1934 and 1935. They had, in fact, fallen, and in that same year, when our egg exports fell by a further £180,000, the egg exports of Denmark to Great Britain increased by £250,000—from £2,435,591 to £2,689,194. Is not that a record to be proud of? Is not that something for the Minister to preen himself on, or is he coming to realise, as we realised and told him when he first came into office, that the agricultural future of this country depended on live stock and live-stock products, and the tillage and pasture necessary to carry on that live-stock industry in the most economical way possible?

They have got to come back to that view. They have got to realise that while there is no going back to 1931, or going back to 1927, because the world has moved on and we have got to move with it, our future agricultural economy is going to be founded on our ability to deliver into the British market perishable agricultural produce in a fresh condition; that we have got to use all the arable land of this country for the production of so much grain as we can sell to the brewers and distillers, and such grain-roots and cereals as we can manufacture into a finished product and sell on the markets of the world at the prices we used to enjoy. When that is done it is going to secure for our agricultural community in the future the high standard of living that they enjoyed in the past. If the other scheme is pursued, under which people are discouraged from the production of live stock and live-stock products, and induced to resort to the peasant methods of agriculture which are advocated by the Fianna Fáil Administration, our people will go down to the level which obtained in this country in 1849. I tell this House now that wheat is a crop on which famine is founded, and that if wheat becomes the mainstay of the agricultural policy of this country our people will go down to the famine level. In two or three generations you will be face to face with a situation in which you will have a large population living on the border-line of subsistence, just as you have in some of the peasant countries of Central Europe. When that day dawns it will be a nice commentary on the capacity of our people to run this country to the best advantage of the Irish people.

There is no objection to the growing of a patch of wheat by any man who has the sentimental desire to produce food for his own family; but, looking at the problem in a broad way, we must realise that live stock is the source of our people's wealth, not only of our farmers' wealth, but of the wealth of every other section of the community. We have to make our choice between a standard of living analogous to that enjoyed by the peasants of Yugo-Slavia and Czecho-Slovakia, founded on a wheat policy, or a standard of living such as our people have grown accustomed to since we won the land war— a standard founded on a live-stock policy, on intensive mixed farming, with increased tillage and increased live stock, and a full realisation of the fact that our tillage is not done for the production of home foodstuffs directly, but for the production of live-stock products indirectly.

I believe that the Fianna Fáil Government is coming around to that view. I do not give a hoot how long they are in office if they do come around to that view and carry it into effect, but unless they come around to that view the sooner they are put out of office the better it will be for everybody in this country. Unless they are put out of office, and put out of it pretty soon, if they are going to stick to their own methods they will do damage which no Government will be able to repair in our life time. I am anxious that the Ministers should learn sense not only in agricultural but in economic and political spheres as well. The same thing applies to them all. They show some signs of learning sense in certain spheres but show no signs of learning it in other spheres. I hope an opportunity will soon be given them of either changing their tune and turning over a new leaf, or else making way for those who are prepared to run this country, not in the interests of narrow-minded bigots on the right or on the left, but in the interests of the ordinary people, so that our people will have a standard of living which will insure for them some measure of comfort and prosperity, instead of patriotic starvation, which consists of bitterness and hatred for everybody but the people who are prepared to bow down and worship at the shrine of Eamon de Valera.

Mr. Corry

If the Deputy would only remain here for a few minutes I should like to give him some figures in regard to eggs. But the glugger has gone. I should like, first of all, to deal with the statements with regard to bacon which have been made here to-night by Deputy Dillon. He told us that the English farmer got 15/- per cwt. more for his bacon than the Irish farmer got.

Mr. O'Leary

He did not. That is incorrect. He said 15/- per pig.

Mr. Corry

All right. I will take either one of them.

Mr. O'Leary

We can prove that to you.

An Ceann Comhairle

Order!

Mr. Corry

Some time ago I had the pleasure of giving the Dáil an illustration of the policy of admixture. I gave as one illustration the high priest of the Opposition policy down in my county, who, having borne the ills of this terrible admixture scheme which Deputy Dillon has been fulminating against for a considerable time, having put up with the tariff on bacon for another period, said to himself in the end: "I am an idiot; why do I not cut this all out and go to my darling mother country, England, produce pigs there, feed them with the maize meal I can buy without admixture, sell the pigs without any tariff on them and become rich and prosperous?" And he went. For 12 months we did not see his lovely face in my district. Then, after fattening pigs in Great Britain for 12 months, he crawled back one day to fatten pigs again in the Free State on the 50 per cent. admixture and to sell them with the tariff on them, and he found it paid him better than it did in England. That was one case. I shall give the name if the House likes. The second charge he made here was about this terrible Bacon Board that is after ruining everything. Again I wish to quote on behalf of this board that has been attacked a statement made by another high priest of the Opposition, Mr. E.J. Cussen.

Mr. Belton

A bacon curer.

Mr. Corry

Yes. He is the Secretary of the County Cork Farmers' Union, which we have had lauded to the skies and held up as the pillar of everything that is right in this country. Mr. Cussen told us that the Pigs Marketing Board has increased the price of pigs by 10/- per cwt.

Mr. Keating

Do you believe him?

Mr. Corry

The third person I bring in is a gentleman who occupied, for at least three days a week, two columns of the public Press on the admixture scheme. I am only going to give a short quotation from that gentleman. At a meeting of the Dairy Science Society in Cork, at which Mr. O'Brien, the Chairman of the Pigs Marketing Board, delivered a lecture, Mr. Buckworth made a speech.

Mr. Keating

A practical man!

Mr. Corry

I entirely agree with you. Here is what he said: "I made money on feeding pigs until the Pigs Marketing Board came along and ruined it." That is the third witness, and he said he made money until the Pigs Marketing Board came along. The other high priest said the board had increased the price of pigs by 10/- per cwt., and the first high priest, who went to England and tried it, came back here to fatten pigs here because it paid better.

Let us leave this and come to figures. In 1932 our exports of pigs and pig products amounted to £2,273,000, and we imported from China or elsewhere that year, to feed the Irish people, £1,406,000 worth of foreign bacon. In 1935 we supplied the Irish people with Irish bacon instead of that £1,406,000 worth of foreign bacon. No bacon was imported, and we exported £2,275,000 worth of bacon. In other words, the farmers, who we are always told should be let alone as they knew what was best for themselves, increased the number of pigs that they bred and fattened so as to make £1,500,000 more out of the pig industry than in 1932 when the Oposition were in office. So the farmers of this country, during the last 12 months, got £1,500,000 more for pigs than in 1932 when everything was prosperous. Apparently they were idiots enough to produce them at a loss.

Deputy Dillon was a long time sitting on a glugger. I agree that he turned it into an orange to try to get a nice smell from it before he was done with it. He was hatching on eggs until I was sure I would hear some chicken clucking under him. What is the position of the egg trade? The Minister pointed out to-night that there was a steady decline in the export trade in eggs for a considerable number of years. Deputy Dillon told us that if, instead of shipping eggs to Germany, Spain, etc., they were all left to our free market in England, there would be plenty of eggs produced. He gave us an instance of the difference in export price, something like £500,000 or £600,000, between two separate years. Deputy Dillon did not say a few other things. He did not tell us that in 1929 we exported to Great Britain £2,970,000 worth of eggs, and in 1931, just two years afterwards, we only got a bare £2,000,000 for the eggs exported, a drop of £970,000 in two years. What kind of a Minister for Agriculture had we that allowed all the hens to go clucking so as to lose £970,000 in two years? Those were years when we had no economic war or anything like that, and we got £970,000 less for eggs. If we take the year following that, the sum fell to £1,880,000, a further drop of £150,000 or £160,000, so that the export trade was steadily declining all the time. After the first sudden drop of £1,000,000, it continued dropping down, and that is the glugger Deputy Dillon was hatching upon all the time.

Deputy Dillon also told us about the poor ruined farmer who was working in misery like a slave on account of beet-growing. The English farmer, of course, is a prosperous gentleman, with money rolling into him hand over fist, having all these lovely markets at his door. But the English farmer is growing beet, and at what price? 35/- per ton on 15½ per cent. sugar and no pulp given back. That is the fixed price paid by the English sugar companies for beet this season. I understand that in the beet-growing areas in England they have an Agricultural Wages Board. Deputy Dillon apparently is so anxious for the welfare of the farmers that he does not want them to have anything. To his mind requiring the farmers to make £1,000,000 or £1,500,000 a year on the growing of beet is outrageous. Why should they do it? Why should any of the collar-and-tie ranchers turn around and demean themselves by taking the plough and turning up the land? Why should they do it? Is it not outrageous? The farmers in the Free State are getting better prices for their beet than their brother farmers in England. I defy contradiction on that statement. I am not saying that our farmers are getting enough——

Mr. Morrissey

I was wondering how long it would be until the Deputy would say that.

Mr. Corry

I will say this—that only for the Deputies opposite the farmers would be getting a better price. When we were endeavouring to get the farmer to grow beet we found a campaign was on all over the country and the farmers were told: "It will ruin you if you grow beet." That campaign was going on tooth and nail, but we got our farmers to grow beet and we found in the following year, at the very period when the Beet-growers' Association were fighting for a fair price, the deluded farmers who had refused to grow beet, and who had seen the cheques their neighbours got, rushed into the office of the Beet Company offering to grow beet at 30/- a ton. I can prove that. That is the cut-throat competition that was going on at the very period when we were fighting for better prices for them. That is why we have not to-day, as I wish we should have, a decenter price for beet. I can say this much anyway, that the English farmer with the markets at his disposal, with the free, open English market for his beet, is growing beet at a lower price than the Irish farmer is getting.

Now I come to Deputy Dillon's bug-bear—wheat. The Deputy says: "My goodness, is it not outrageous to think that the Irish farmers are growing something for which they have a guaranteed market?" Yes, is it not outrageous to be growing wheat on the lovely land on which you could fatten bullocks for John Bull? I've seen 300 or 400 acres of that lovely land worked by one herd and a dog. Is it not terrible to see on that land a man with his coat off ploughing it?

Mr. Belton

Is fattening land good wheat land?

Mr. Corry

Any land is good wheat land, any land that you can plough is good wheat land. I have seen crops of wheat grown on alleged fattening land that Deputy Belton is speaking of and it averaged 12½ barrels to the statute acre. If Deputy Belton would spare a day and go round with me next harvest time I am sure it would be a pleasure to both of us, for he, too, is a supporter of the wheat growing policy. I will bring him down to fattening lands and show him what has been grown on them. This is land that we succeeded in wrenching off the landlords in the end. So far as wheat is concerned, we were growing 20,000 acres in 1932. This has particular interest for me, for I happen to represent a constituency where, under Griffith's valuation, the land is valued at something in the neighbourhood of 30/- to 40/- a statute acre. It was valued as wheat land, and because of that the valuation is very high. A 40-acre farm has a valuation of £70.

Mr. Belton

Would that be near a town?

Mr. Corry

No, it is five miles from Midleton and between Midleton and Youghal, where, by the way, five of those gentlemen for whom Parnell fought, if we are to believe the fulminations of the Deputies opposite, hold between them 6,000 acres. As I was saying, unfortunate farmers in my constituency are paying high rates on their land, and after the wheat market went in 1921-22, I saw wheat sold there at £6 per ton. That was in 1926. This was good millable wheat. When the Opposition were in office there was no outlook for the farmers who worked that land. They were told that they could grow wheat if they wished and sell it at the world price. When they asked for protection in the growing of barley they were also refused. To-day these farmers are ploughing their land and growing wheat. I have seen beet grown in that particular district and yielding 18 tons to the statute acre. Yet we are told that is land that is too good to till and that it should be left for fattening. Deputy Dillon went a little bit further. He attacked alleged foreign flour millers. He said they were getting certain concessions here and a certain quota to mill wheat. He said they were milling wheat here and getting so much more for it than they would get in Liverpool. When Deputy Dillon's Party were sitting here, that gentleman was importing wheat from Liverpool to feed labourers down in Midleton, while the flour mills in Midleton were idle or working two days a week.

Mr. Holohan

But the people were getting cheaper flour.

Mr. Corry

It is very little good to tell a man: "I will give you a cheap coat," if he has no money to pay for it.

Mr. O'Leary

That is just the position Deputy Corry is creating.

Mr. Corry

Deputy Dillon washes his hands every morning, like Pontius Pilate, and says: "I am not responsible for any of the sins of Cumann na nGaedheal." But now we have men working in the flour mills at home instead of having the flour milled for us in Liverpool.

Mr. O'Leary

How many additional labourers are working in the flour mills?

Mr. Corry

We changed that. I know the particular miller referred to by Deputy Dillon. I say that a statement such as Deputy Dillon made about that particular Cork firm is nothing better than a libel, and a dirty libel at that, and it is only what we could expect from a Deputy like Deputy Dillon.

Mr. McMenamin

What does the libel consist of?

Mr. Corry

Oh, now we have the lawyer.

Mr. McMenamin

What does the libel consist of? Is it that he is getting more for his flour in Limerick than in Liverpool? If that is so, where does the libel come in?

Mr. Corry

That miller is at present working one flour mill in Deputy Cosgrave's constituency and three flour mills in my constituency. He is giving decent employment and the farmers of the district have a market in these mills for the wheat they grow. The men who were working two days in the week, when the Deputies opposite were the Government, are now working the full six days, and working overtime.

Mr. McGovern

In England.

Mr. Corry

Oh, Columcille. The Deputy will never get over those old days. Deputy Dillon had another cry. He was delighted that the season was so bad this winter for setting wheat that there would not be so much of it next year. I can assure him there will. We got over all our difficulties and every man who wanted to grow wheat has it in, and it is growing fine. You would love to see it coming up.

Mr. O'Leary

You can laugh at the mountainy farmer all right.

Mr. MacEntee

A lot of concern the Deputy has for him.

Mr. Corry

Deputy Dillon went on to deal next with the butter question. He told us all about our iniquities in regard to that question and spoke of the wretched position into which we had brought that industry. He had a new craze about cheese, some particular cheese that he himself would eat. He could not dream of eating this Galtee cheese. That is too near the mountain for him. Deputy Dillon ignored the fact that, in 1932, the foreigner imported 19,000 cwts. of cheese here, and, in 1935, we exported 9,000 cwts. of cheese—a complete turn-about. We not alone supplied our home market with 19,000 cwts. of cheese, but we exported 9,000 cwts. in addition. When the Butter Prices (Stabilisation) Act was going through the House, Deputy Mulcahy led the Deputies opposite into the Lobby against it like sheep, with the exception of a few unruly members who broke away from him and followed me into the other Lobby. Apparently, the price that was to be good enough for the farmer delivering milk to the creamery was about 2d. per gallon. He was not to get the benefit of that Act if Deputy Mulcahy was to have his way, because he led the Party opposite into the Lobby against it. All credit to Deputy Bennett who voted for it. He was a rebel that night in a good cause.

Mr. Belton

In a free market what would abortive cows be worth?

Mr. Corry

Stick to the bulls and to the rhubarb.

Mr. Belton

That is a big mouthful for you.

Mr. Corry

Instead of the 2d. per gallon which the farmer would get in a free, open English market, if there was no tariff on our butter going into England and if this fearful economic war did not exist—if Deputy Cosgrave were over here and if Deputy Hogan, who said that he had looked at this thing and would not have it at all and that what the farmer was getting was good enough for him were still Minister for Agriculture—he is now getting 4.17d. per gallon average price at the creamery. That position should not be; all those markets should be taken away from the farmer, according to Deputy Dillon. If the advice of Deputies opposite was taken, the farmers would be wiped out of existence in the last few years.

Deputy Dillon wound up in smoke when he went on to deal with tobacco. He attacked the growing of tobacco here. It was another outrageous thing and he told us what it cost. I grew tobacco the first year and I got a nice little cheque for £173 for two roods—half an acre.

Mr. Belton

Out of the Revenue?

Mr. Corry

Yes, and it was a free and open game for any farmer who wanted to do it. Any farmer who wanted to grow tobacco the first year had full liberty to do so. The fulminations of Deputies like Deputy Dillon and the rest of them did, of course, keep thousands of pounds out of the pockets of decent farmers who were led away by their statements. They were told "Growing tobacco? It is in a lunatic asylum you should be."

Mr. Holohan

Nobody prevented anybody from growing tobacco that I know of.

Mr. McGovern

Except the Minister who would not give a licence.

Mr. MacEntee

There was no licence required in the first year.

Mr. Corry

You would not even grow potatoes. There is no good in talking to you.

Mr. Belton

How much did you make out of half an acre last year?

Mr. Corry

I am very glad you asked me. I had more than half an acre; I had an acre and a half of it. It worked out at roughly £30 for the half-acre. You can be making that up. It gave a lot of employment to the boys and a lot of employment to the local people——

Mr. Belton

It was good politics.

Mr. Corry

——and it left me a bit in the pocket afterwards. I have no inclination to find fault with anything that does that. I have seen tobacco valued this year, and I have just come over from a rehandlers' meeting for the pleasure of telling the Deputy a few nice things. I was informed, at that meeting, by a neighbour of his, Mr. John Greene, that the relative value of one acre was £40. I am sure that Mr. Greene is not a man who would put up the price. A neighbour of his in County Meath told me that one half-acre had cleared £26 already, so that tobacco is not such a bad crop when you know how to go about it— that is the bother—and if you are prepared to put your hand down in your pocket and to say, "There are a few fellows walking around the roads and we will give them a job and let them work at it."

Mr. Belton

How much is 10d. in every lb. loss to the Revenue costing the Revenue?

Mr. Corry

Listen to me, Deputy Belton. You at present represent a city constituency. There was a time when you represented the farmers. The Deputy takes a great interest in the farmers still, and I am glad to see it.

Mr. Belton

That is a nice evasion.

Mr. Corry

Let not you or any other man bother about the Revenue. There is a gentleman down there who will keep a very good eye on the Revenue side. As far as we who are here representing rural constituencies are concerned, it is for us to get what we can for our farmers, and let the Minister for Finance look for the Revenue.

Mr. Belton

That is not agricultural policy.

Mr. Corry

It is agricultural policy. Our agricultural policy is to see that our farmers get as much as we can secure for them here on the home market, and we are doing that. I have seen tobacco valued this year at ½ per lb. That means that that man is going to get 2/4 per lb. for the tobacco.

Mr. Belton

Do not make it too good or the Minister will take off another 10d. per lb.

Mr. MacEntee

There is not the slightest fear.

Mr. Corry

The Minister is prepared to play fair at any time. He even gave a tariff on the Deputy's rhubarb.

Mr. Belton

I would not exchange it for tobacco at your price.

Mr. Corry

We are growing beet to sweeten it for you. To get to business on the Estimate proper——

Deputies

Hear, hear.

Mr. Corry

Up to the present I was busy looking over these wild, foolish statements made by some young people over there who would be better employed if they stuck to one particular job, and learned all about one job. When a Deputy starts to talk at one time about galvanised buckets, at another time about Coats' thread, and on still another occasion about Indian meal, his poor little nut gets addled and he is so often up and down like a jack-in-the-box, that nobody pays any heed to him. There is one matter to which I should like the Minister to pay some attention. It has been referred to in this House before. There is an item of £3,000 here for the enforcement of the Live Stock Breeding Act. I honestly consider that a waste of public money. Over and above that, it is putting a burden on our farmers that is an unfair burden. I remember a previous occasion in this House when the ex-Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Hogan, speaking on that Act, said:

"There is one advice I should like to give to the new Minister in regard to the Live Stock Breeding Act. It is this, that whilst it may produce very fine bullocks, and very fine cattle generally, beef animals, if it is worked in the way it has been worked for the last five or six years, it will be very difficult soon to get a decent milking cow in this country."

These are the words of the late Minister at a time when he was no longer Minister, and when he was no longer working this Act. I should like to call the attention of the Minister to the price of bulls at sales and shows down the country at the present day. Unfortunately, when inspectors come along licensing these bulls they will never look at the milk pedigree of an animal. That will never enter their minds. They will judge a bull just on condition with the result that you are getting beef-bulls and bad milking cows. The way in which these gentlemen do their work has rendered it practically impossible for the ordinary farmer to get a bull. The bulls are sold at such a price that it is beyond the capacity of the ordinary farmer to purchase one.

Mr. Belton

Is it your point that dairying should be extended?

Mr. Corry

My point is that the Act should be abolished, or, if not abolished, that the bulls should be judged on the milk records of the sire and dam.

Mr. Belton

If you want to extend dairying.

Mr. Corry

If you want to get anything like a decent milking cow. I say further that the action of the inspectors down the country has made bulls so scarce that the price of them has been run up to such a figure that it is impossible for the ordinary farmer with five or six cows to buy one. Fancy his having to pay £40 for anything like a decent bull. It was the habit of the previous Minister for Agriculture, and the habit has been carried on by the present Minister for Agriculture, to select these inspectors from the ranks of members of shorthorn breeders' associations, persons who have a vested interest in condemning as many bulls as possible at the local licensing shows in order to drive up the price of the registered bulls at the shows.

Mr. Belton

That is a rather serious statement.

Mr. Corry

I say it definitely. I know all about it, and any Deputy living in a rural area knows it as well.

Mr. Belton

It will be very difficult to get judges after that statement.

Mr. Corry

I say these judges should be selected outside any particular association which has a vested interest in the working of this Act.

Mr. Holohan

They are not selected altogether from these societies.

Mr. Corry

I think that is practically the only complaint I have to make about the manner in which the Department for Agriculture is worked.

Mr. McMenamin

Everything else in the garden is lovely.

Mr. Corry

Everything else in the garden is lovely. I should not like to have the Deputy growing in the garden I should have to pull him as a weed. I consider that, as matters stand, we have improved our position during the last 12 months, and improved it considerably. As a matter of fact, I think that we are getting on to a better basis than we had in 1932.

Mr. O'Leary

You never say that at the cross-roads now.

Mr. Corry

I shall meet the Deputy at the cross-roads, and I shall give him as big a hammering as he got the last time. I regret if I have said anything——

Mr. Belton

That was useful.

Mr. Corry

——anything that would hurt Deputies opposite, but really one loses patience when he hears Deputy Dillon fulminating for a couple of hours in regard to everything about which he knows absolutely nothing.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Perhaps the Deputy will continue to deal with the Estimate.

Mr. Corry

I would suggest as you, Sir, reminded me of it——

Mr. McMenamin

He has found something else that is not right.

Mr. Corry

I think I have, and I am glad that I was reminded of it. I would suggest, in connection with the provision for agricultural schools and farms, that a few of the Opposition Deputies, Deputy Dillon in particular, should be taken out to these agricultural schools and farms for a period, given tuition and made to do a little work on the land. Let these Deputies do a little work on the land and, when they come in here after that, they will not occupy the time of the House with such wild statements as we heard from Deputy Dillon the other night. I suggest that the money spent on those agricultural schools would be well spent if Deputies were taken in there and got a little lesson. Deputy Dillon also alluded to the admixture scheme. He attacked the admixture scheme to-day and wanted to know why it existed at all. He thought it was a wretched thing to have the admixture scheme operating. He ignores the fact that the admixture scheme is using up 175,000 tons of barley and oats for which the gentlemen opposite could not find a market when they were in office. It has provided a market to that extent for our working farmers whose valuation is 30/- to £2 per statute acre— farmers for whom I asked the ex-Minister for Finance to do something to provide a market when I was on the opposite side. In the last year before we took office, I remember having to go to Mr. Beamish, the brewer, and beg of him on my bended knees to buy 20,000 barrels of barley in my constituency.

Mr. O'Leary

You had to go to Guinness last year.

Mr. Corry

I had to ask him to take it at any price he cared to pay. This year we have 176,000 acres put into the admixture scheme.

Mr. Cosgrave

Acres or tons?

Mr. Corry

There is about a ton to the acre.

Mr. O'Leary

And you did that at the expense of the poor farmer.

Mr. Corry

I have quoted extensively here to show the Deputy what his own leaders thought about that admixture scheme. I have quoted the opinions of Mr. Buckworth, Mr. E.J. Cussen of the Cork Farmers' Union and others, and he ought to be satisfied.

Mr. O'Leary

You should talk at Ballyvourney.

Mr. Corry

These are the men who are the Deputy's high priests at election times, handing him bible after bible with marked passages at his meetings. Their opinion has been given repeatedly in this House. I am grateful to the Deputy for reminding me of these few little things I forgot, and I hope we shall hear from Deputies opposite some excuse for their attitude.

Mr. Minch

Did the Deputy say ten barrels to the Irish acre or the statute acre?

Mr. Corry

To the statute acre.

Mr. Morrissey

Is that the average?

Mr. Bennett

We can congratulate the Minister on being more lucid in defending his Department to-night than Ministers usually are. Deputy Corry referred to the Pigs Marketing Board and the sale of pigs generally. It is dangerous for a Deputy to make any statement on the question, because he will be contradicted by some Minister who did not catch exactly what he said at some other period. For that reason, I am glad the Minister for Finance is here at present. The Minister for Finance, when winding up the debate on the Vote on Account, in Committee on Finance, referred to some statements I made and said:—

"There is one point I want to deal with before I conclude. That is, Deputy Bennett's statement that if any industry is in a parlous condition at the moment it is the bacon industry. I do not know what foundation Deputy Bennett had for that statement. I do not know what knowledge he has of the bacon industry. I do not know what paper he reads. He comes from the South and as one of the representatives of the constituency of County Limerick, I assume he sometimes gets the Cork Examiner.”

I did not say a word about bacon in the few remarks I made on that Vote. I never mentioned the subject, but as I am on this question I may say I agree with the Minister. He went to great pains to suggest that I said everything was wrong with the bacon industry. I agree with the Minister that everything is right with the bacon industry and more than right. Everything is right with the bacon manufacturers, but everything is wrong with the pig producers—the people for whom some of us are here to speak. I never mentioned the word "bacon" in that particular debate. Not being like the Minister——

Mr. MacEntee

The gentlemen whose speeches are reported there are not pig producers?

Mr. Bennett

I did not contradict the Minister when he spoke. In that particular debate the Minister was, as he often is, out of order. In defiance of the Chair, he insisted on speaking about bacon and pigs, about which he knows nothing. I had only uttered two sentences on the question when the Ceann Comhairle suggested that I should not proceed further and, in deference to him, I did not. I now take advantage of this, which is a more suitable opportunity. What I did say was that if I thought £10,000 or £12,000 would put any industry in a better position than it is now I would not grudge that sum or even double it, but if there was any industry in a bad condition at the moment it was the pig industry. The Minister for Finance went to great pains to suggest that I said the bacon industry was in a particularly bad way. When the Pigs Marketing Bill was before the House, the Minister for Agriculture predicted great things of it. Some of us ventured to suggest that it was a pig merchants' or bacon curers' Bill. That is what it has turned out to be. Deputy Dillon has referred to some of its ramifications. There have been frequent changes in price, he pointed out, and other occurrences which were objectionable. If justification were required for what we said about that Bill, it was furnished by the quotations by the Minister for Finance of remarks made by bacon merchants showing conclusively, as he said, that the bacon industry was now in a better position than ever it was. This is because of the benefits of the Bill to the bacon curers. They are more consolidated, better organised and better equipped to hoodwink the farmer than ever they were.

At the end of his remarks about the Pigs Marketing Board to-night the Minister said:

"On the whole the working of the Act was as successful as we could expect. Farmers may hold a preference for the ‘free market'."

That is, that that system is better than the system of handing over pigs to the factories and getting whatever the factories chose to give. They were graded from the top price to the lowest. The farmer had to be satisfied with the machinery set up by the Bill, to grade pigs after they were dead. "The principle of the Bill," the Minister said, "was grading after slaughter." I might add and payment after slaughter. I would not have any objection to grading after slaughter or before slaughter, if they were graded after payment.

An Ceann Comhairle

Is the Deputy now criticising the Act or the administration of it?

Mr. Bennett

I am criticising what is occurring in the pigs and bacon industry. What is happening is this: whatever was hoped for from certain legislation in the way of improving the position of farmers has not in practice resulted in any benefit to them, but rather the reverse. The system as the Minister pointed out is that pigs are graded after slaughter into grade A, grade B and grade C and the farmers are paid accordingly. To a limited extent farmers have the alternative of selling in the open market, but the Pigs Marketing Board are rapidly proceeding to exterminate that alternative. Farmers are recommended and induced to deliver in the factories. Every effort is made to do away with the activities of pig jobbers, and with local markets where farmers at least were assured, if they sold their pigs, of payment for them. They had not to wait until it was determined, after slaughter, what grade the pigs were in. Competition was good for trade, and in open competition a man was assured of a fair deal. The Minister more or less admitted that in reply to an interjection of Deputy O'Leary, regarding the export price of pigs, because he said they had to compete against the factories and that that possibly raised prices. If there was no competition we would hear loss about the factories and the grading operations. I had a letter from one of the largest breeders and feeders of pigs in County Limerick which illustrates better than anything else what is happening. This gentleman wrote to me when the Bill was going through pointing out certain things that might be done but which were not done. He writes:

"Experience of the working of the measure has borne me out in this. You will notice that it is the policy of the Pigs Marketing Board to create a monopoly for the curers by doing away with the fairs and markets and thereby eliminating whatever open competition existed. As an instance of what is happening I may quote my own experience recently. I forwarded a number of pigs to a certain curer. The fixed price for grade A, class I, was 59/- per cwt. The price which I received was 47/-. On inquiring the reason I was informed that when killed the bacon was bound to handle soft. Now, I have been selling pigs for quite a number of years and this particular lot were as good as any I ever sold. Indeed, I always tried to put my pigs on a market in the best suitable condition. I have no doubt whatever that had I sold these pigs to a buyer in the open market I could have secured as nearly as possible top price. I would have known exactly what I had to receive and there would be no gamble as to whether the pigs killed hard or soft. The production of pigs at present prices and under present conditions is impossible."

Having referred to the grain mixture he continues:

"I can produce my account for the past year. The cost of the actual food bought exceeds my income from pigs by about 10 per cent. and this is excluding the cost of labour, rent and rates. Naturally, I am not going to continue and I am selling my breeding sows with a view to getting out of pigs as soon as possible. I am afraid there are all too many similar cases and unless there is a serious review of the whole position the pig industry in the country must inevitably collapse. This time 12 months I had 16 breeding sows, presently I have only seven and intend getting out of them at the suitable opportunity."

What that breeder states is substantiated in every way by other people who are not in as big a way in the pig business. I find that there is a common practice amongst curers, when pigs are delivered to them, of making some cut from the top price. It may be because the bacon was soft. That is a pretty good excuse. The Minister referred to competition and said that, when selling in the fairs, the farmer does not know that the buyer is not getting the better of him. It is possible that he would be a better judge of weight than the farmer. The same applies to the cattle trade. Most of us sell beef by hand. In the good old times, when trade was good, we knew our job pretty well. Producers of pigs know their job and there are very few farmers who could not give a fair idea, within a few pounds, of the weight at which a pig would kill. I venture to say that the gentleman whose letter I read could predict to within six pounds the weight of a live pig. I am quite certain that when delivering his pigs to the curer he gave them as nearly as possible at the right weight and in the right condition. I am certain that there are numerous other instances of the same kind. The result of the Bill is that the bacon curers are becoming rapidly rich and the farmers are tending to get out of raising of pigs.

I was interested in the Minister's reference to dairying. I should not say "dairying," because, practically speaking, the Minister confines himself to butter, cream, condensed milk and other articles of dairy production. I complimented the Minister on giving so many details. I am very glad that he did so in a very good spirit and tried to explain the Estimates as well as he could. When dealing with dairying, the Minister proceeds to analyse it as if butter, cream and cheese were the only products of the dairy cow——

Mr. Belton

And calf skins!

Mr. Bennett

——forgetting that there was a calf, as well as the calf's skin, and that the live calf within the skin was up to a couple of years ago one of the main profits of farmers; that the farmer's main source of profit was the rearing and feeding of the early matured calf. It was on the sale of the calves that he depended much more than any fluctuation in the price of milk.

I have often said that statistics are dangerous—and they are. They confuse some people, and Deputy Corry fell into the trap this evening. The Minister gave some statistics which are useful. At the end of his speech he quoted one figure which I do not agree with. He said that farmers' receipts for butter and from dairying generally were £613,000 more than if they had a free market and if there was no economic war. Then Deputy Corry proceeded to say that if the Minister and himself had not stepped in the farmers would be getting only 2d. a gallon for their milk. The Minister and myself have often argued that question across the floor of the House —the Minister in the end sticking to his point and I to mine. Even allowing that the figures quoted by the Minister are correct, I find that they are of help to me in my present argument. I think it is correct to say that we produce in or about 209,000,000 gallons of milk. Due to the various manipulations adopted by the Government, we can take it that the average price the farmer gets for his milk is 4d. or 4¼d. a gallon. The Minister says that the farmers are getting £613,000 more for their butter and dairy products than if they had a free market, and that they would be only getting 2d. a gallon for their milk if he had not stepped in. In view of the fact that they have not a free market, and that, due to the manipulations to which I have referred, they are getting 4d. or 4¼d. a gallon for their milk—a difference of 2¼d. a gallon in comparison to what they would get if, according to the Minister, we had a free market—the farmers, basing our calculations on the quantity of milk produced, ought to have received in or about £2,000,000 instead of £613,000.

That is the conclusion that I arrive at on the figures quoted by the Minister and if he is right in his contention. On their butter, cream and cheese alone, according to the Minister, our farmers ought to have received at least £2,000,000 instead of the £613,000 and that without taking into account the value of the calves. I am afraid, however, that there must be something wrong with the Minister's figures. I should have been glad if the Minister had adverted to the question of calves. The only reference he made to them was in reply to an interruption by Deputy Belton when he said that the bounty on calf skins was being continued this year. I want to ask the Minister why he should deliberately pursue a policy of reducing the number of cattle in the country, especially at the present time when we are suffering from a shortage and cannot fill our quota in regard to our exports of cattle to Britain, and when, as seems probable under existing conditions, we will be suffering from a greater disability in that respect next year. It is unfortunate, I think, that we should be engaging in this desperate practice of slaugh tering what would almost certainly be valuable animals in a year or two if they were allowed to survive. I am afraid that, before long, we shall be reaping the fruits of the Minister's policy in that regard. I believe that in 12 or 18 months there will be a shortage of stores of certain ages. There is already a shortage of store cattle—that is if farms were stocked to the extent that they ought to be. As everyone knows, owing to the depressed conditions in the country, there are a great number of farms, which are not stocked to their capacity. If we ever get back again to the conditions in which farming can be carried on profitably as it was heretofore, and that farmers gradually set about filling up the gap in their herds, I am afraid that the number of cattle available to meet their needs will fall far short of their requirements.

I do not think any purpose would be served by repeating the arguments which I have previously put forward in this House with regard to the Government's wheat policy. Deputy Dillon dealt with that to-night. As Deputies know, I have never believed in the Government's wheat policy, or their policy generally in regard to tillage. I am talking now of the creation of a wheat acreage by the payment of a subsidy. As I have often said, if a subsidy is made large enough you can produce almost anything, whether it be a crop or a manufactured article. I, however, have always been against the production of anything which needed a perpetual subsidy, and always will be. In going ahead with his policy, the Minister was favoured by fortunate circumstances—with three good seasons. Because of that farmers were enabled to grow the crop under the best conditions. Even though that was the case, I do not believe that many of them would have grown wheat except for the fact that circumstances were so very bad in every other direction that they had to turn to it because they knew they would get a certain price for it whether it was good or bad. The proof of that is that they did not grow wheat when there was a very much bigger price for it on the open market—a bigger price than the 23/6, including the subsidy, that was guaranteed to them. The Minister, as I said, was lucky in getting three good seasons in succession, seasons which we are not likely to have in this country for many years again, for putting his wheat policy into operation. At the end of his speech, he said that they had been directing their attention to wet harvests and to providing for storage for damp crops. He said that they forgot altogether to provide for wet winters until it was forced on them. They did not think of it until the deluge came down and that drew the Minister's attention to the fact that even in this country we were likely to get a wet winter some time. Might I suggest that in addition to providing for wet winters he would also provide for wet springs?

I can conceive the possibility in this country, at a not very far distant date, of our having not only a wet winter, but a succeeding wet spring? I can remember several periods when we not only had a wet winter, but a wet spring and it continued wet well into the summer. Indeed, we were lucky if we got three or four fine days in which to scramble some of the produce out of the flood. We may reach such a period again. We are certain to have at some time or other on top of a wet winter a wet spring. If the Minister is providing for a wet winter, I would recommend him also to provide for a wet spring, because that is very likely to occur.

Mr. Donnelly

What about providing for a wet summer?

Mr. Bennett

I am sure Deputy Donnelly can remember as well as I do when it rained consecutively, with only a few days' break, for nearly nine months.

Mr. Donnelly

That must have been the year of the flood.

Mr. Bennett

There were plenty of floods then and we are very likely to have those times again. Not only have we had wet winters and springs, but we have had wet summers and a wet portion of the autumn. The interval between the rainy periods was sometimes so short that there was little chance of carrying out harvesting operations. I do not think I have much to congratulate the Minister on, but I would like to pay him a tribute in this respect, that for the desperate circumstances that are forced on him he is not altogether responsible. For much that is happening in agriculture the Minister is not responsible. Whatever share of responsibility he has for it, it is his share as a partner in the Executive which controls the whole organisation of Government. So far as his particular activities as Minister for Agriculture are concerned, I believe that to the best of his ability he has tried to tide the country over a difficult set of conditions, a set of conditions which a Deputy from any Party in the House, if placed in the Minister's position, would find it difficult to control, until very obvious remedies are put into operation. I do not believe any Minister for Agriculture could, under present circumstances, so order conditions in any branch of the agricultural industry that the farmers would be able to live and work and make a profit. That will not be possible until there is a settlement of the dispute which has brought about the existing unfortunate depressed prices for agricultural produce.

Mr. Norton

There is one phase of this Estimate to which I would like to direct particular attention. It is a phase of agriculture which received very little attention from the Minister in the course of his speech. It is a phase of agriculture which the Minister, in the many Bills he has introduced dealing with live stock and the corn production policy of the Executive Council, has studiously ignored. I refer to the rates of wages which are at present paid to agricultural workers. This is mainly an agricultural country, and, notwithstanding intensified efforts to develop its secondary industries, agriculture is, and will continue to play, an extremely important part in the national life. One would imagine that in a country which has a very large number of agricultural labourers whose rates of wages are appallingly low, that the Minister for Agriculture, who ought to be concerned with their standard of livelihood, who ought to be concerned with the standard of remuneration paid to them, would long before now have realised the necessity for introducing here a Bill designed to have some steadying effect on the rates of wages paid to agricultural workers and would have long before now realised the necessity of doing something to frustrate the savage attacks made from time to time on the already intolerably low standard of wages of agricultural workers. One would expect that he would have taken some definite remedial action.

The Minister for the past four years, notwithstanding that he has introduced many Bills here, has not yet asked the Dáil for any legislative authority to establish an agricultural wages board, nor has he taken any other steps such as would be calculated to give to the agricultural workers a reasonable standard of remuneration for the valuable services he renders to the nation. The Minister is not unfamiliar with the demands made for the establishment of some method not merely of retaining the existing rates of wages for agricultural workers, but producing a substantial increase in them. The Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis has already directed attention to the necessity of doing something to stem the absolute rout of agricultural workers in respect of rates of wages.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Is the Minister able by administration to alter the agricultural rates of wages?

Mr. Norton

I suggest he is quite easily able to do it by administration. He can quite easily, if he so desires and if he would only bestir himself in that direction, insist for instance in the administration of his wheat policy, that the bounty would only be paid to those who pay tolerably decent rates of wages to agricultural labourers, and in a variety of other ways.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Clearly we are discussing the administration of the Minister's Department. I do not know, but the Minister will probably be able to tell us, whether by administrative means he can alter the rates of wages of agricultural labourers. That is the first point. Secondly, the Deputy is advocating legislation and, thirdly, there is a motion on the Order Paper which deals with the setting up of an agricultural wages board, and the Deputy is anticipating the discussion of that motion by dealing with it on this Estimate.

Mr. Norton

I think, from your knowledge of the procedure in this House, that you will have no hesitation in realising that it is quite unlikely that motion will be dealt with before next November.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I cannot deal with that.

Mr. Norton

I am not suggesting that you should deal with it, but I suggest you are not unfamiliar with the probability that the motion will not be dealt with until next November. What I want to suggest to the Minister who is charged by the State with looking after the affairs of the agricultural industry is that there is a burning problem to be dealt with, the problem of the low rates of wages paid to agricultural workers, and the failure of the Minister, whose salary is provided for in this Estimate, to do anything to relieve the picture of unrelieved poverty so far as the agricultural workers are concerned. We are entitled to know from the Minister what he has been doing to earn his salary, particularly in connection with the rates of wages of agricultural workers.

An Leas-Cheann-Comhairle

Unless the Minister indicates to the contrary, I have to assume that he is able to alter the rates of wages by administration.

Dr. Ryan

I do not think so; I think it could only be done by legislation.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

If the Minister says so, the Deputy cannot discuss legislation on the Minister's Vote.

Mr. Norton

I am not discussing legislation and I am not even expecting the Minister to introduce the agricultural wages board which, I think, would be a partial solution of the problem. I am rather convinced, as a matter of fact, that the Minister has made up his mind that he is not going to introduce such a board. I am not appealing to or exhorting him to do it, because I feel he has made up his mind that he will not do it. You need not assume that my speech is in any way connected with a plea to the Minister to introduce legislation.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy has endeavoured to indicate to the Minister how he could improve the wages of agricultural workers through administration, and the Minister tells us that that could only be done by way of legislation.

Mr. Norton

Will you not agree that I am entitled to direct the Minister's attention to the condition of agricultural workers?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Not if the Minister has no power to alter that by administration.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney

On a point of order, Sir. Might I not ask, if the result of the Minister's changing his policy will enable farming to pay and consequently enable agricultural labourers to be paid decent wages, if that is not relevant to this discussion?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

If the Minister can only alter agricultural wages through legislation, the matter cannot be discussed on this Vote.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney

If the Minister can, by administration, enable farming to pay and consequently enable the farmers to pay decent wages to their workmen, then, surely the fall in the wages which are paid to agricultural labourers is entirely due to the agricultural policy?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

According to that, one could argue the reduction of rates on agricultural land on the same basis.

Mr. Norton

I hope to show, Sir, that the fall in wages in agriculture is due to the policy of the Minister, if I get an opportunity of developing that point of view. I want to portray, first, the plight of the agricultural workers, and to relate that to the administrative incompetence of the Department and of the Minister by showing that that condition of affairs is brought about by that type of administration.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy did not start doing that yet.

Mr. Norton

No, Sir, I was interrupted—I do not say undeservedly— but, nevertheless, I was interrupted, and if I get an opportunity, I do not think I will have any difficulty in convincing the Minister that the ought to be ashamed of the condition of things he has allowed to continue in respect of the payment of wages to agricultural workers. I was saying that the Minister is not unfamiliar with the agitation which has been carried on for quite a long time directing his attention to the low rates of wages paid to agricultural workers and various remedies have been suggested by which the Minister could take action, administratively, if he desired, or by legislation, if that were found more desirable, to raise the level of wages of workers in the agricultural industry. Last year, the Minister announced—I think it was in June of last year—that he was preparing a memorandum for submission to the Executive Council on this question of the rates of wages paid to agricultural workers, and said that he hoped that, in a few weeks' time— probably in the month of July, 1935— the Executive Council would be busy considering the proposals which he was submitting to it for remedying the low rates of wages paid to agricultural workers. Later in the year, however —in October—when asked what he proposed to do in this matter, which was one peculiarly within his province and for which he had special responsibility, the Minister indicated, in substance, in reply to a question by Deputy Davin in the House on the 31st October, that he did not contemplate doing anything at that time, and I expect that is the present position of the Minister in regard to that question.

Dr. Ryan

How does the Deputy get that substance from the reply?

Mr. Norton

Would the Minister read the question himself?

Dr. Ryan

Would the Deputy read it?

Mr. Norton

Very well. I shall read the whole question, and I shall read the answer, if the question is more illuminating than the answer. Deputy Davin, on the 31st October, 1935, asked the Minister for Agriculture:

"If he is aware that in several areas agricultural workers are in receipt of wages which are actually less than the amount of unemployment assistance to which they would be entitled if they were unemployed, and that in numerous instances agricultural workers in receipt of unemployment assistance are offered work at rates of wages lower than the amount of the unemployment assistance, and informed that unless they accept the work offered their claims to unemployment assistance will be disallowed, and whether he will state if it is proposed to introduce proposals for legislation to enable him to set up an agricultural wages board for the purpose of regulating the wages of agricultural workers; and, if so, when the proposals for this purpose will be circulated."

To that question—one which ought to have excited the sympathy of the Minister—the Minister made this reply:

"As to the first part of the question, I am not aware that the facts are as stated by the Deputy but, in any event, the matter referred to would appear to be one that comes within the province of the Minister for Industry and Commerce. As to the concluding part of the question, there are no proposals for legislation with a view to setting up an agricultural wages board in contemplation."

That is the Minister's own language.

Dr. Ryan

Did the Deputy concerned ask a Supplementary Question to that?

Mr. Norton

I cannot say. I have not got the Supplementary Questions, if there were any; but does the Minister deny that that was his reply?

Dr. Ryan

No, but the supplementaries are interesting.

Mr. Norton

Do I take it, from that, that the Minister gives a different reply to the Supplementary Questions than that contained in his main reply?

Dr. Ryan

No. However, I shall produce the supplementaries.

Mr. Norton

Will the Minister produce the fact that the reply to the supplementaries is different to the main reply?

Dr. Ryan

No, but I shall produce the hypocrisy of the Deputy.

Mr. Byrne

That is hardly parliamentary. The Minister has referred to the Deputy's hypocrisy. It is not a parliamentary comment.

Mr. Norton

Well, the Minister can have a present of his bad manners. There are statistics issued by the Department of Industry and Commerce from time to time, and they indicate the rates of wages paid to agricultural workers over 21 years of age, in each year, in the Provinces of Leinster, Munster and Connacht, and three Ulster counties. We get an illuminating picture of the condition of the agricultural workers by reference to these figures. In 1925, the average earnings of agricultural workers in Leinster were 28/6. In 1928, the average wages were 25/3. In 1932 the average rates were 23/6. In 1934 the average rates were 21/6. So that, from 1932 to 1934, the rates of wages paid to agricultural workers, according to this statement, in the Province of Leinster, fell from 23/6 per week to 21/6 per week, and nothing was done in the meantime by the Minister or by the Executive Council in any way to stop the reduction of wages for agricultural workers during that period. The figures for 1935 were supplied by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, in the Dáil, in answer to a Parliamentary Question on the 5th February. The Minister indicated then what the rates of wages were in the various counties throughout the country. An examination of the wages paid in the counties which comprise the Province of Leinster would show that the figures fell below the figure furnished in the Official Report of 1934. So that when we study the figures supplied in the Official Report we find there is a constant downward tendency so far as the wages of agricultural labourers are concerned; and the Minister does nothing while the agricultural workers are tightening their belts. Agricultural wages are slashed all over the country, but the Minister does nothing whatever to stop the reduction of wages paid to those workers. Everyone in contact with rural Ireland knows well that the figures supplied as the wages paid to male agricultural workers of 21 years of age are absolutely absurd; they are absolutely cruel. I do not believe that those rates of wages, as given, are the wages paid to labourers in the counties of the province referred to.

In the return furnished by the Minister for Industry and Commerce on the 5th February, we were told that the average rate of wages paid to male agricultural workers, over 21 years of age, in the County Kildare is 20/- per week, and in the County Carlow 20/- per week. It is utterly preposterous to suggest that 20/- per week is the rate paid to agricultural workers in Kildare. Agricultural labourers in Kildare would have to walk long weary miles before they could find a farmer to employ them at 20/- per week. And the same applies in Carlow to workers employed in the agricultural industry. If the Minister wants any evidence of that let him find out from the Beet Sugar Company what rates are paid to agricultural workers for topping and readying beet for the factory. He will find that an appallingly low rate is paid all over Kildare and Carlow. The rate of wages paid for long hours of work ought to excite the sympathy of the Minister to such an extent as to induce him to introduce legislation upon that matter.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy is spoiling his own case. I have allowed him a good deal of latitude. He says the Minister should introduce legislation. Am I to take it the Minister cannot deal with it unless legislation is introduced? If so, I must ask the Deputy to desist. The Minister has no power to deal with it by administrative action.

Mr. Norton

I say the Minister could deal with it by administration.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I do not accept that. The Minister has not got that power.

Mr. Norton

I think the Chair should be guided by the facts of the case. At any rate we are directing the attention of the House to the appallingly low rates of wages paid in agriculture.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I allowed that, but the Deputy cannot pursue that unless the Minister has power to alter it.

Mr. Norton

I am endeavouring to show that the appallingly low state of agriculture is producing this state of affairs.

Mr. MacDermot

Hear, hear; and the Labour Party as well.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

All the Deputy has done, so far, is to indicate that wages are low in the industry of agriculture. If the Minister wanted to interfere could he alter the wages now by interfering?

Mr. Norton

I say he could, in a variety of ways, by administrative action, and regulations which he is able to make under various Acts, insure that this state of affairs would be corrected to a very great extent.

Mr. Belton

On a point of order. I submit that wages paid by agriculture is a better indication of the position of agriculture than the price paid for its produce. I submit that dealing with an Agricultural Estimate, of any size, or the Agricultural Estimates for the year, we should bring before the Minister's notice the economic conditions in agriculture, and the wages that are being paid. I submit that Deputy Norton's argument would show that.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

There are many things that would indicate the condition of agriculture, but we cannot discuss all of them because the Minister is not responsible for all of them. If the Minister is not responsible, and cannot alter or improve wages paid to agricultural labourers, we cannot pursue that line of argument.

Mr. Belton

In this House the Minister is responsible for agriculture, and the agricultural policy he is pursuing produces the conditions innumerated by Deputy Norton. Is it not the Minister's business to improve the conditions of agriculture? If it is not his business to do that whose business is it?

Mr. O'Leary

Deputy Norton is not asking him to improve agricultural conditions.

Mr. Belton

Deputy Norton is doing good work and Deputy O'Leary can follow him.

Mr. Norton

This matter has been referred to on previous Agricultural Estimates. It has been customary to permit Deputies to direct the Minister's attention to the condition of agricultural workers.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy knows I have allowed him a good deal of latitude in directing the attention of the Minister to agricultural wages. But we must reach a point somewhere. We cannot discuss agricultural wages, as such, over which the Minister has no control.

Mr. Norton

I suggest the Minister is responsible for this state of things, and we have a right to direct his attention to it. Here is an Agricultural Estimate, and surely we have a right to take stock in discussing that Estimate, of the agricultural position.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Could the Minister alter the position in regard to wages?

Mr. Norton

I say he could.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

He says he has no power.

Mr. MacDermot

Deputy Norton could alter it.

Mr. Norton

I suggest he could alter that position without legislation. At all events, quite apart from that net point, I think that in discussing the Estimates for the Department of Agriculture we are entitled, in reason, to survey the position in agriculture by directing the Minister's attention to this, and by showing him that there is need for him, with such administrative and executive power as he and the Executive possess to alter the position as we see it. Up to the present no effort has been made to stop discussion of that kind on the Estimate of the Minister for Agriculture.

The Minister, when asked in October last whether he was aware that agricultural workers were being required to work for rates of wages lower than the rates of benefit provided under the Unemployment Assistance Act, said that he was not aware that the facts were as stated at that time by Deputy Davin. One would imagine from that that the Minister did not believe such a condition of affairs existed, but quite recently we had an interesting happening in County Clare—your own constituency, Sir, and you are probably familiar with the circumstances of this particular case. The manager of the employment exchange in Ennis directed a number of workers to proceed to an agricultural holding two miles from the town, there to engage in the work of topping beet for farmers. They were required to walk the two miles from the town to the farm, to work for 11 hours per day and walk the two miles back, and the munificent wage they were to receive for that work was 9/- per week. Some of those people could have got 12/6 per week in the form of unemployment assistance benefit.

Mr. Belton

And there are 83 factories in Clare!

Mr. Norton

The men refused to work 11 hours per day for 9/- per week. The employer, realising that the job had to be done, and that the workers would not work for 9/- per week. increased the rate of wages to 2/- per day for an 11-hour day.

Mr. O'Leary

Did they get their board with that?

Mr. Norton

They might have got a can of tea in the middle of the day. They went out in the morning worked all day and went home in the evening.

Mr. Belton

Why spoil a good case by asking a question like that?

Mr. O'Leary

I wanted to help him.

Mr. Belton

If you had left it as it was it would have been much better.

Mr. Norton

Five of the persons who were sent to this particular farm declined to work for 2/- per day for a day of 11 hours. They went back to the manager of the employment exchange and told him so. The manager of the exchange said that if they did not work for 2/- a day for a day of 11 hours he would have to suspend them from the receipt of unemployment assistance benefit. Here was a classical example of men being expected to engage in the laborious work of topping beet for 2/- per day when they could have got more in unemployment assistance benefit at the employment exchanges. That is not the only instance of the conditions of agricultural workers. Some time ago it was reported in the Dublin daily Press that a member of a local authority stated that the persons working in his district—the district of Tullow, in the County Carlow—could not earn more in wages than from 10/- to 12/- per week, and the statement was not controverted by anybody. Again we recently had an example in the Roscommon District Court in an action to recover arrears of wages. The plaintiff was a farm labourer, and he stated that he had been employed at a wage of 8/- per week. The defendant farmer swore that the rate agreed upon was not 8/- per week, but 5/- per week. A full report of that case can be found in the Roscommon Herald. We had another instance at Rathfarnham, where an action was instituted in the District Court for the recovery of a balance of wages due. The plaintiff in that instance swore that he had agreed to milk cows and do general work for a dairy proprietress for a wage of 5/- per week and his board. He alleged, however, that after six weeks he was paid only 3/-, and the court accepted his statement.

About 12 months ago I caused inquiries to be made in 17 counties from reliable persons, in order to ascertain what were the prevailing rates of wages in respect of agricultural workers. I received replies from those 17 counties, and in only two instances, one in Offaly and the other in County Dublin, did I get evidence that a rate of wages in excess of 20/- per week was being paid. In October of last year the Minister did not know of the circumstances described by Deputy Davin, but the information I received in the matter was that in County Wexford agricultural workers were working for as low as 14/- a week; that in Kerry they were working for rates of wages from 12/- to 18/- per week; in Westmeath from 10/- to 12/- a week; in County Cork, from 15/- to 18/- per week; in Galway and Roscommon, from 15/- to 18/-; in Tipperary, from 15/- to 20/-; in Waterford, from 12/- to 18/-; in Meath, from 12/6 to 16/-; and in Sligo from 10/- to 15/-. There is a picture of poverty portrayed there that obviously calls for remedy of some kind. Look at those rates of wages. Pass over perhaps the rather abnormal case of the person who was employed for 5/- per week, and after working for six weeks got 3/-. Pass over even the case of the person in Roscommon, who worked, he said, for 8/- per week, but the farmer said for 5/- per week. Let us pass over those cases as some what abnormal, and take the general level of agricultural wages as we know them from contact with agricultural workers. I have already said—and I believe it, and I think no Deputy in this House will have any hesitation in believing the same thing—that the rates shown in the official statistics as the average rates of wages are absurdly inflated, and that they do not represent the rates of wages paid to agricultural workers in the counties or provinces mentioned. Take those rates of wages which were received as typical of the rates of wages paid to agricultural workers in the counties mentioned, and I challenge the Minister or anybody else to deny that they are typical rates of wages.

I mentioned 14/- per week in County Wexford, and many instances could be found of persons working in Wexford and elsewhere for a lower rate than 14/- per week. Is that the wage policy of the Minister in respect of agricultural workers? Is that regarded as the wage policy of the Executive Council in respect of agricultural workers? Just imagine the position of an agricultural worker, a married man with five or six children, expected to sustain himself and his family in a civilised community on a rate of wages as low as 14/- or 15/- per week. I should like to know from the Minister whether he considers that that is a living wage. I should like to know from him also whether he proposes, by any action within his command, to remedy the condition of affairs disclosed by the low rates of wages which I have quoted; rates of wages which the Minister must be familiar with in respect of his own constituency; rates of wages which can be ascertained by any reference he desires to make even to Deputies of his own Party. I know at all events the rates of wages paid in County Kildare. I know they are abominably low, and the Fianna Fáil Deputy for that constituency can say whether the rates of wages paid there are higher than the average level of wages which I have already quoted. Of course it may be said by the Minister that the agricultural wage levels are low all round; that they are low in every country and that the rates of wages paid here are no lower than they are elsewhere. But I should like to direct the Minister's attention to the fact that the report of the British Agricultural Wages Board issued in 1934, showed that during the years, 1932, and 1933, there was an increase in wages in nine counties in Britain, while there was a reduction of our rates in eight counties. The recent report of the British Agricultural Wages Board shows that the average level of wages in the agricultural industry in Great Britain at present is 33/- per week. Wages of 33/- per week were paid to agricultural workers in Great Britain and 14/- to agricultural workers in Wexford. That is the anomaly that we see and any effort to suggest that there is depression all round in the agricultural industry cannot possibly gainsay these facts.

The Minister, in the course of his speech, talked about beet growing and wheat growing, and made reference to the position of barley and oats, pigs and live stock generally. We find the position that, although the price guaranteed to the farmers in respect of beet is not a price that adequately rewards them for their labour—if Deputy Corry were here I suppose he would support me in that point of view —at all events, those persons who grow beet are at least guaranteed a minimum price. The persons who grow wheat are guaranteed a minimum price and, so far as the State can ensure it, there is a guaranteed market for barley and oats, with the power, which has been occasionally used by the Minister, to fix a minimum price for barley and oats. There has been a guaranteed minimum price fixed for pigs by the Pigs Marketing Board. Recently the Minister found it necessary to fix a minimum price for cattle. Minimum prices have been fixed for these products which are in the ownership of the farming class.

While I think it is right and proper that a minimum price ought to be fixed for every possible type of farm produce, so as to ensure the farmer a decent return, for the labour he puts into production, I want to direct attention to the fact that the fixation of minimum prices has all been in respect of produce, but the agricultural worker has not been guaranteed any minimum return in the form of wages. There is to be regulation, even though it is defective regulation, in respect of live stock and cereals, but there is to be no regulation whatever in respect of agricultural wages. They are allowed to dribble down as low as possible, and the Minister stands by while that condition of affairs exists. On the one hand, you have fixed prices, designed at all events to prevent the farmer being asked to sell his produce at slaughter and bankrupt prices, and on the other hand you have a position where the agricultural worker is not guaranteed any minimum standard of wages for the production of these products on behalf of the farmer.

I suggest to the Minister that there is a contrast there which ought to excite his curiosity and even his sympathy in order to do something to stop the continual downward drift of the wages paid to agricultural workers. For four years now these wages have been at the mercy of every economic blast that blew across the agricultural field; not merely exposed to the blast of the economic depression in the agricultural industry, but to the blast that blew in the economic war, and to a variety of other circumstances which are not calculated to raise the wages of agricultural workers. During that four years, when the Minister had full power, as he still has, to do something to stop the downward drift of the agricultural workers' wages, the Minister apparently chose to do nothing in the matter.

I am one of those who want to see as many persons occupied on the land as possible, as many persons kept on in the rural areas as possible, because I believe that the drift into the towns, the drift into a flooded labour market, the drift into overcrowded accommodation, the drift into insanitary dwellings, is neither economically nor nationally a desirable kind of development. But, what encouragement is there to the agricultural worker to remain in the rural areas when these wages are being paid? What encouragement is there to keep the agricultural worker on the land when these scandalously low wages are paid? It is much better for the agricultural worker to leave the rural areas, to leave the land, and to drift into towns, particularly the boroughs, where he can manage to get at least freedom from the conditions of wage slavery that he knows in the rural areas.

If we are going to have a healthy agricultural position we cannot possibly obtain that desirable standard of prosperity by pauperising the agricultural worker. To-day he is being compelled to tolerate a pauperised standard of existence. One has only to go amongst the agricultural workers to realise their plight. One has only to look at the amount of the piling arrears on labourers' cottages to realise how difficult it is for them even to pay the relatively low rents charged for these cottages. The plight of the agricultural worker to-day is something that ought to excite the sympathy and attention of the Minister. We can never attain in this country a healthy agricultural position so long as we continue to allow the agricultural workers' wages to be debased to the present level. So long as that condition of affairs exists, it is impossible to foresee any possibility of importing any prosperity into the agricultural industry.

The Minister has made efforts in certain directions to improve the cereal and live-stock position. Some of these efforts are commendable and praiseworthy, if one could look at them without reference to the general position in the agricultural industry. But, if we look at these individual achievements in one direction or another, if we look at this effort to get some kind of organised plan applied to agriculture and, at the same time look at the ocean of poverty which surrounds the agricultural industry in the form of underpaid workers, then we get a picture of agriculture which is far from healthy, far from prosperous, and which must be thoroughly and radically overhauled if we are going to get an agricultural position in this country which in any way approximates to a position which will give a reasonable return to all those engaged in the industry.

Deputy Dillon desires to have this Estimate referred back for reconsideration. I do not share his views on agriculture generally, nor do I even share his views as to the reasons why this Estimate should be referred back, but having regard to the Minister's lamentable failure, and it can be described as no other type of failure, to do anything for the agricultural worker, the pursuance of that do-nothing policy for the past four years, and the present apparent unwillingness on the part of the Minister even to shift from the position which he has consistently adopted for the past four years, I think the best thing this House could do would be to refer the Estimate back to the Minister for reconsideration and in that way demonstrate to him in respect of agricultural wages that the House expects him to do something to relieve the present deplorable poverty which exists amongst the agricultural workers.

Mr. Belton

While Deputy Norton was speaking my mind went over the order in which the Estimates appear on the Paper. The Estimate immediately preceding the one we are discussing was for wireless broadcasting. In the broadcasting programme we get every night before the news the weather forecast and shipping news. I think the skipper of the Labour Ship has got some hint from somewhere that in the weather forecast the shipping news shows that the storms are looming up in the distance. I am sure Deputy Norton, who now sees the danger ahead, is not so foolish. He is far too astute a politician to be so foolish as not now to see the results of the policy pursued for the last four years, the policy which he and his Party will find great difficulty in dissociating themselves from— dissociating themselves from responsibility for the policy which has produced the appalling conditions which have been portrayed by Deputy Norton as existing in the agricultural industry. Anybody responsible for those conditions should now be examining his conscience. Deputy Norton is quite right in saying that in Kildare and in Dublin, which pays the highest agricultural wage in Ireland, men cannot get work on the land at £1 a week. It does not pay. Why? I am surprised why Deputy Norton and his Party have not tumbled to the reason for the conditions——

Mr. MacDermot

They cannot afford to.

Mr. Belton

Well, it is better for them to pay the price to-day than, perhaps, in six months' time. Some day they will have to afford it. Some day men will have to come down to realities. Economic conditions are forcing us to the climax, or perhaps anti-climax. What is the reason? Agriculture the world over is going through the greatest depression in its history. It is going through the worst type of depression—a depression coming at a very bad time—a depression following a period of unpredecented prosperity in the agricultural industry. Then super-imposed on that we have the depression caused by the economic war in this country. What is that depression as recognised by the coal-cattle pact recently ratified by this House with the support of Deputy Norton and the Labour Party? Is it not this, that the House has given recognition to this fact that we can trade with Britain on certain conditions? The conditions precedent to any trading with Great Britain in which we will be paid for our merchandise is that the farmers of this country must hand over to Great Britain a tribute of £5,000,000 a year and this must be handed over free, gratis and for nothing before our produce can be accepted at Britain's valuation. Is not that the position; I put the question to Deputy Norton? Deputy Donnelly shakes his head. Let us stop this nonsense.

Dr. Ryan

Hear, hear!

Mr. Belton

The Minister for Agriculture says hear, hear.

Dr. Ryan

Yes. Stop this nonsense.

Mr. Belton

Yes. I say stop this nonsense. The Minister for Agriculture at the President's whip lowered the flag. He acknowledged the flag was lowered and in lowering the flag he recognises that we have to pay £4 5s. 0d. a head on every bullock and heifer shipped to Great Britain. That is the tribute the farmers have to pay. I want to tell Deputy Norton that there you have the secret of the low wages. We learned long ago in our school reading books, longer ago than some of us would care to remember, that "you cannot take more out of the meal tub than is put in it."

Mr. Donnelly

Yes, if it were oatmeal.

Mr. Belton

Great Britain is taking the best of our produce and she will pay nothing for it until she gets that tribute of £5,000,000 a year free, gratis and for nothing. Where does that money come from? Of course it will be denied that it comes from the farmer. It will be dressed around in order to confuse the people. The Minister for Agriculture and his semi-colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance, yesterday in reply to a question put to him as to the compensation for this tribute that has to be paid to Great Britain came to tell us that the farmer was getting a market for beet. I will deal with that point now. Deputy Corry when speaking on this Estimate said that the price that we get for beet is not enough. Now, growing beet has nothing whatever to do with the question of compensation for that tribute. The growing of beet on an extensive scale here is a new departure, and when the Beet Bill was before this House the Minister told us over and over again that in no country in the world was beet an economic proposition. It has to be subsidised in every country in the world where it is grown. It has to be subsidised here. Therefore, as was pointed out to the Minister, and I think it was pointed out by myself, it would cost the taxpayers £1,000,000 a year either as a tax or as a duty to produce sufficient beet to meet our full requirements. But how is that a quid pro quo for the levy exacted by Britain? How is it a quid pro quo for the loss of the market in which this country sold its wares prior to the sudden change? As a matter of fact, the beet scheme of the Government at the present price to the consumers or taxpayers was only made possible by the general depression in agriculture wrought by this tribute because the profits of the general agricultural industry were reduced to nil. This cash crop came in during a period of depression to give the agriculturalists ready cash. It was a cash crop and they accepted it under slave conditions and agreed for the time being to carry it through in order to give them ready cash. They were prepared to work under these conditions.

Mr. Donnelly

Did that apply to the first factory?

Mr. Belton

The first factory was experimental, as Deputy Donnelly knows.

Mr. O'Leary

And the Minister for Finance called it a "white elephant."

Mr. Belton

I am not opposing the production of sugar beet or the growing of sugar beet. The point which I am emphasising is that a sugar factory, in view of the loss sustained by agriculture owing to the tribute that is forced from the farmers by Great Britain, is no compensation for that heavy tribute. That is the point I want to drive home. Neither does the wheat scheme and the price paid for it, either by the consumer or by the taxpayer, provide recompense for the loss sustained by the tribute to Britain. The wheat policy I support, and I advocated that policy before a single Deputy on the Government Benches advocated it. I published it in pamphlet form. The Minister is laughing, but I did that at a time when the Minister knew practically nothing about agriculture, not that he knows a terrible lot about it to-day.

Dr. Ryan

I will read the Deputy's autobiography some time.

Mr. Belton

It is time the Minister started to read something, if what he has produced is the best he can produce.

Dr. Ryan

What did the Deputy not invent in this country?

Mr. Belton

I never invented a doctor as a Minister for Agriculture, and never would. It is a bad invention and we see the result of it now, because a man who is out of his profession and out of his vocation is, and must be, a yes-man.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

There is nothing about that in the Estimate.

Mr. Belton

Perhaps not, but when a person puts out his head, you have to hit it. The Minister gave us a lot of statistics to-day. He told us how he had stabilised dairying, but, as Deputy Bennett very rightly pointed out, the Minister's idea of dairying is buttermilk. He told us about the good market there is here for butter at 1/5 a lb. I wonder how much Irish butter at 1/5 a lb. can Deputy Norton's agricultural labourer buy on his present weekly wage? How much butter can the unfortunate working farmer and his family buy from the creamery they supply with milk and pay 1/5 a lb. for it? The Minister knows that there are creamery districts at present in which they cannot afford to use butter.

Dr. Ryan

I do not.

Mr. Belton

Then the Minister has not got his ear to the ground.

Dr. Ryan

The very same amount of butter is being used now as was used five or ten years ago.

Mr. Belton

That does not answer my statement and it is no refutation of it. I say that there are creamery districts in which the very people who are supplying milk to creameries cannot afford to buy butter at 1/5 a lb. from those creameries.

Mr. O'Leary

They are hardly able to buy the paraffin oil.

Mr. Belton

The Minister thinks the whole question is one of butter, but, as Deputy Bennett rightly pointed out, there is the calf.

Dr. Ryan

Calves do not come into dairying. You never saw a calf in a dairy.

Mr. Belton

And is it a goat produces the calf? Will a cow have milk if she does not bear a calf?

Dr. Ryan

I never saw a calf in a dairy.

Mr. Belton

I am talking about the dairying industry. That calf the Minister is going to slaughter and that is the best he can produce by way of agricultural policy. The Minister gave us 2¾d. or 3d. per gallon as the free price for milk at present if the Government had not interfered. If the Government had handled the external policy of this country properly, and if we had the markets we had heretofore and enjoyed the use of these markets until we found better ones, what would the price of the calf which the dairy cow has every year be compared with the subsidised price of 10/6d. for the calf skin? Would the price of the calf not be 50/- or £3?

Dr. Ryan

When did they get that?

Mr. O'Leary

I got £5 for them within the last six years.

Dr. Ryan

In a creamery district?

Mr. O'Leary

Not in a creamery district. It is not the people in the creamery districts who pay the price for the calves but those in the non-creamery districts. People in the Minister's county pay the price for them.

Mr. Belton

If there is any part of Ireland where a calf would fetch £5, would it not pay any man to buy them at 50/- or £3 in another part and bring them there to sell them?

Dr. Ryan

Yes, if he got £5.

Mr. Belton

A Deputy said that that was got. I have it from farmers in Clare and Limerick—and I think those are dairying districts enough— that they got £3 or £3 10s. within the last five years.

Dr. Ryan

For dropped calves?

Mr. Belton

For dropped calves.

Dr. Ryan

Go ahead if you are going to talk like that.

Mr. Belton

I want to emphasise that so that the country will see what the Minister knows about agriculture.

Dr. Ryan

The Deputy would want to emphasise it fairly often to get people to believe it.

Mr. Belton

I want to emphasise it by dwelling on it in order to show how little the Minister knew about the conditions that obtain.

Mr. O'Leary

Will you set up a commission to investigate it, and I will prove it?

Dr. Ryan

You would prove it I am quite sure.

Mr. O'Leary

I will prove it through some of the Minister's own supporters.

Mr. Belton

This kind of stuff of the Minister shaking his head as much as to say "I do not believe you; you are not telling the truth" will not work. The position is entirely too serious for that. It has become very serious for those of us who are working the land and who have to find wages every week. It is becoming very serious when, from the best of land in Ireland, perhaps in the world, farmers are going to the court and swearing that they are not able to pay their rates.

Dr. Ryan

They were advised not to pay last year.

Mr. Belton

Where and under what circumstances? Come now, stand up to that.

Dr. Ryan

By the Dublin County Council.

Mr. Belton

When, and where?

Dr. Ryan

They would not collect the rates.

Mr. Belton

I have said at the Dublin County Council, I have said it here and I shall say it anywhere that while our President enters into a secret deal with England that England must get a tribute of £5,000,000 a year from the farmers of this country, the farmers are entitled to recoupment of that sum from our Government. If the farmers had any backbone they would go to the Government and say "Recoup us that £5,000,000 which can be equated against our annuities and rates."

Mr. Donnelly

Why did you not say that to Deputy Cosgrave when you were in the Fine Gael Party? He paid £50,000,000 to England.

Mr. Belton

When and where? Do not try to pull away now. I am surprised at the foolishness of the Deputy in saying that I ever supported that Agreement.

Mr. Donnelly

You followed the Leader who paid that amount of money to England.

Mr. Belton

I left the Leader who refused to come in here to condemn that Agreement.

Mr. Donnelly

You followed Deputy Cosgrave, who paid £50,000,000 to England.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney

The Deputy knows perfectly well, and it has been shown again and again, that Deputy Cosgrave did not give away a halfpenny.

Mr. Corry

You are the very Deputy who confessed that he tried to extract the money before he made any bargain.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

This is all irrelevant. Deputy Belton should be allowed to proceed with his speech.

Mr. O'Leary

Deputy Cosgrave gave nothing away that you are not giving away.

Mr. Belton

If we are to accept Deputy Donnelly's statement for what it is worth, what was President de Valera doing when that money was going out of the country? Why did he not come in here and defend the rights of the people?

Mr. Donnelly

President de Valera condemned the Agreement. You had not the manhood to condemn it.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

There is no use in pursuing this line of argument. It is entirely irrelevant. Deputy Belton should come to the Estimate and deal with it. Further interruptions will not be allowed.

Mr. Belton

The Deputy says that £50,000,000 was given away. Is it not time that that should be stopped, if it be true?

Mr. Donnelly

It is stopped.

Mr. Belton

Why did the Deputy vote for the coal-cattle pact then?

Mr. Donnelly

To help the farmers.

Mr. Belton

To give £5,000,000 a year to England.

Dr. Ryan

He is reading his speech out of the Official Report.

Mr. Belton

I am not reading anything, as the Minister knows.

Dr. Ryan

You might as well read it. You made the same speech several times before.

Mr. O'Leary

That was how you got into office—by telling the people that you would reduce taxation by £2,000,000 a year.

Mr. Corry

They had ten years' experience of your Party.

Dr. Ryan

I wish I could understand what the Deputy is talking about.

Mr. O'Leary

I hope you understood your pal, Deputy Norton.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

This is not the way to discuss this matter in a deliberative assembly. Deputy Belton is in possession and should be allowed to proceed.

Mr. Belton

After it has been agreed that this special levy must be paid annually by Irish farmers to Great Britain, the Minister comes in here and has now before this House an Estimate for agriculture that has been bled white, an Estimate for a gross sum of £1,700,000 or a net sum of £660,000. That is for administration only. He puts up that Estimate and asks the House to pass it. Deputy Dillon quite properly has down a motion to refer back the Estimate. In a period of depression, how can the agricultural industry—I think £20,000,000 would represent the export portion of it— bear a tribute of £5,000,000 a year and survive? What is the sense in taxing the people to the extent of £700,000 to administer Agricultural Acts in this country? That is not the entire cost of administration. There is a suggested rate of 2d. in the £ which agricultural committees must levy each year. That 2d. in the £ does not appear in these Estimates at all. It appears in the Estimates for the county councils. That has to be levied to run the committees of agriculture. There are other levies under the Dairies and Cowsheds Order, the Bovine Tuberculosis Order and various Orders of that kind, all running into hundreds of thousands of pounds. That amount has to be collected and spent every year in the administration of schemes intended to help agriculture, while agriculture has placed upon it a burden that confiscates even more than the margin of profit which was derived from it when we enjoyed world market prices. I really cannot understand the mentality of any grown-up person who advocates an agricultural policy like that which the present Administration is putting through. I cannot understand how any Minister or any man of mature years could tolerate the present system of agriculture. As a matter of fact, if I had responsibility for it, I would interfere with the freedom of the farmers if they were foolish enough to work land in the way it is now being treated. The Minister gave us figures showing the increase in the acreage under wheat. I think it went up to 160,000 acres this year as compared with about 20,000 in 1922. How is that wheat grown? Most of it is grown out of lea land and it is followed each year by wheat. There is no rotation. The fertility of the land is being robbed to produce wheat, and nothing goes back to provide the mechanical action that is necessary to keep up the fertility of the soil and keep it in what is generally known as "good heart." How can that be done? It can be done only by mixed farming and by carrying the necessary quota of live stock. The Minister, in his introductory speech, seemed to be concerned only with not having a surplus of live stock—with our being able to get rid of our live stock. He told us that it was necessary to slaughter more calves. He told us that, unlike two years ago, the licences now issued for the export of fat cattle had no money value in themselves; they could not be sold at any price, whereas, two years ago, they could be sold at £4 or £5 each.

He tried to argue from that that the position is so much improved that we now get rid of our cattle. But have we the same number of fat cattle to get rid of now? Of course, we have not. Two years ago, when this bolt fell, the quota system was introduced and the licences were introduced and handed over to the cattle dealers. Some of them realised as much as £100 every Thursday morning for their licences for cattle in the Dublin market. That year a considerable number of cattle were being stall-fed. When the people could not get licences and could not get a market for their stallfeds that year, they parted with them at sacrifice prices. They had to do that. Coming on late in the season, when the danger of their taking pneumonia was passed, they put these cattle out on grass. That could not be repeated. The people could not bear to repeat the loss they suffered that year, and this year the people have not the same number of cattle tied up. Consequently, when more cattle are going to Britain, there is a scarcity of fat cattle. That is quite natural, and it is a fact, as the Minister knows. The Minister's own constituency has always been tillage country, and is still tillage country where grazing is not largely carried out in the summer. The number of cattle carried on the land in Wexford during the summer is not great, but all the farmers there used to buy in cattle and fatten them in the winter, mainly for the manure necessary to carry out their tillage rotation. I suggest to the Minister that there are fewer cattle tied up in Wexford this year than have been tied up for the last four years. If I made that as a positive statement, I doubt that the Minister would be able to contradict it.

Dr. Ryan

I shall not contradict you any more. It only makes you worse.

Mr. Belton

These cheap jibes are worthy of the irresponsibility that attaches to the present Administration. Though we have plenty of "yes-men" here, some of the "yes-men" are finding out their masters. I know some of them in County Dublin. I have in mind a gentleman who has been a platform man for the Minister for Finance in the last few elections. I shall not ask the Minister to read the Independent, but let him read “Truth in the News” for some day last week and he will find that this gentleman presided at a convention of farmers at which 13 persons attended—I would not say that any of them was a farmer in the strict sense of the word. This gentleman presided and proposed that during the economic war no rates or annuities should be collected from the farmers. That is different from what the same group said three years ago at a meeting in the same hall—that the place for me and my colleagues in the Dublin County Council for advocating the same thing was Mountjoy. The same gentleman now wants the Government to intervene to prevent the “blood-sucking banks” from calling in their mortgages. Why? Because an ejectment decree has been got against him, as published in the Press, for £6,000 or £7,000, and because he owes the Dublin County Council some hundreds of pounds for rates. It has come home to him, and when it comes home to him and others like him, they drop the patriotism that is merely a whitewash on the present Administration. I wonder if the Minister for Agriculture ever considers the Commandments. Does he ever consider that we should pay our lawful debts?

Dr. Ryan

What about the rates?

Mr. Belton

I am not going up the road you want me to go up. I am not going to say that we should pay the land annuities to Britain, but I say that we should pay our own lawful debts. Where do we stand if we advocate a policy like that of this poor foolish farmer I have mentioned—a policy of "stick it, boys," and then, when he finds he is up against it, saying that the banks are bloodsuckers and should not get repaid the money they lent or any interest on it, while he and his henchmen and the Minister for Finance are advocating and supporting a policy which made it impossible for him to pay either principal or interest on the money with which the banks obliged him.

Mr. Donnelly

He has only changed his mind.

Mr. Belton

He wants to do it at somebody else's expense. That is the responsibility which is on Ministers and Deputies opposite.

Dr. Ryan

Many a good man leaves a Party.

Mr. Belton

I move to report progress.

Progress reported. Committee to sit again on Tuesday, 31st March.