At question time to-day I addressed a question to the Minister for Agriculture in connection with the herring industry in this country, and asked him what he was going to do to get a market for the herring which were being caught in Donegal. I desire to remind those Deputies who are interested in fisheries that at this time of year we are referring to the matje herring which is a peculiar commodity having as one of its outstanding characteristics the fact that even when cured it will not keep as well as the summer or autumn herring will keep. Our trade for this herring in the old days was with Russia, Germany and the United States of America. One of our principal markets was Germany, and by the quality of this particular type of fish we built up in Germany a goodwill so effective that German merchants specifically sought out Donegal herrings. With the development of economic nationalism, which has spread all over Europe, the Government of the German Reich attempted to develop their own fishing fleets, and one of the methods to which they resorted was to restrict entry to their market very severely, with the result that they determined to exclude any exporter whom they thought they were in a position to exclude—who could not get back on them in any effective way. They, therefore, attacked the British exporters and the Irish exporters.
A couple of years ago we reached the stage at which the German Government refused to take any Irish herring at all, but owing to the proximity of Derry to the Donegal coast a number of boats put out—they were British trawlers—and fished the Donegal coast, brought the herring into Burtonport, Downings, Kincasslagh and Buncrana and cured it there; sent it to Derry or got from the Derry shippers quota certificates, and with those quota certificates shipped the herring to Germany, representing that because the fish had been caught by British trawlers in neutral waters, and had only been processed in Irish Free State territory, it was reasonable to say that they came within the British quota for the German market, and were therefore exportable on that representation. Up to last year that expedient succeeded, with the result that our matje herrings were got away, and profitably so. This year the German Government has fixed exporters with notice that they will not accept herring which has been cured in the Saorstát, no matter how or where it is caught, and that any herring to be exported on the British quota must be cured in Great Britain or Northern Ireland. Now, a lot of people might say: "Well, the German market which is available for imports of herring is so small that it is unreasonable to press our Government to insist on a share of it." Let me tell the House that the British share of the German quota for herring is 700,000 barrels for this year, and I think it is true to say that if we could get a quota of 60,000 barrels—I want to understate my case, if anything, because I believe it is a good one—we would clear all the herring we could catch.
I am not suggesting to the House that we could fairly ask the Minister to get all of that this year, but I am suggesting this: Last year we gave the Germans a trade agreement of 3 to 1. and before trade agreements were the order of the day at all we put a lot of business in the way of the German people in connection with the Shannon scheme. This year the German Government knew that it was of special importance to us to get a market for herring, and we were negotiating a trade treaty with them. I say that the Minister for Agriculture was gravely remiss in his duty when he did not insist that this ultimatum would be handed to the Government of the German Reich: "Either you take part of our herring exports or we will make no agreement with you." A map has been displayed downstairs in the Lobby during the last week or so showing Deputies from all over the country where there is the deepest depression in regard to unemployment.
Deputy Doherty and Deputy Brian Brady will tell us that that map in no way exaggerates the situation in West Donegal. It is the area in Ireland where unemployment is worst. The Government, Sir, has boasted that under their dispensation the poor are better off than they ever were before. I make bold to say that there is a section of the poor who are better off than they ever were before, and that is the poor who do not want to work; they are better off because they are getting unemployment assistance. But the great majority of the poor in this country are the poor who want to work, who want to earn their living, and who would much prefer to earn their living than get doles or outdoor assistance of any kind, and it is on behalf of those poor that I am concerned to solicit the support of Deputies in this House now.
There are thousands of men in County Donegal who could keep the wheel turning and make a modest living if they could only get the fish, and remember that not only will the men get work but there is a large number of girls who are engaged in this curing business, and who have brought in invaluable revenue to that very area which is coloured black on the map displayed by the Department of Finance in connection with the unemployment problem. As things are at present, the herring is being caught by trawlers and brought into Burtonport. That herring has to be loaded on lorries there, carted into Derry, and the curing carried out there. The result of that is that the majority of our girls are not getting work to-day. Those who are getting work have to spend half their income in paying for lodgings and subsistence in the City of Derry. They have to abandon a mode of livelihood which leaves them in their homes, move into the City of Derry and work there as curing girls under conditions which are not perhaps at all as acceptable as those which would obtain in their native surroundings.
Remember that Germany is one of the alternative markets of which Fianna Fáil used to boast so much. Germany was one of the countries in which we were going to dispose of a great part of the agricultural surplus for which there was no longer any market in Great Britain. I am not asking that we should trespass widely or extravagantly on the German market. All I am asking is that the Germans will give us 5 per cent. of what they are giving the British in their herring market—35,000 barrels for the first year. On that basis I am prepared to give them a two-to-one agreement, but I say that it is an outrage to ask us to take £2 worth of merchandise for every £1 the Germans take from us, unless the Germans are prepared to take something which we find some difficulty in disposing of. The only things which the German Reich seems to be prepared to take from us at the present time are things that we ought to have no difficulty in disposing of, and at a much better price than the Germans would give us for them, if we would dispose of them in the ordinary market which is there for the taking. All we actually give the Germans now are cattle, shillings below the British price, and we have to pay them for taking them away.
