Léim ar aghaidh chuig an bpríomhábhar
Gnáthamharc

Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 12 Dec 1940

Vol. 81 No. 8

Private Deputies' Business. - Compulsory Tillage Order—Motion.

I move:—

That the Emergency Powers (No. 53) Order, 1940, be and is hereby annulled.

Two hours were allotted this morning for this motion, but seeing the state of business now and the time it is, I suggest, if there is general agreement, that the remainder of the time to-night be devoted to this motion. I have spoken to representatives of the Government and the Labour Party and they have no objection, if the House is agreeable.

Yes, if necessary.

At what time will the Deputy want to be called upon to conclude the debate—10.15?

Will the Deputy agree to rise to conclude the debate at 10.15?

Say 10.10, that is 20 minutes.

All right.

An Order of such far-reaching importance as this should hardly be left to private members to be brought before the House. This Order not only affects agriculture, which is our principal industry, but it affects the whole economic life of the nation and perhaps sets up precedents that might on flimsy excuses be copied in future. The Order is not only an Order requiring one-sixth of the arable land of the country to be tilled, but it is an Order which empowers the Minister, if there is not a reasonable effort made to till the required percentage by a certain time—I think it is the 14th February—to take possession of the lands and let them or till them. I should also like the Minister, when replying, to be clear on this: as I read the Order, there will be no liability on the Minister, while using the lands, to pay either annuities or rates, and these would accrue as a further burden on the occupier temporarily dispossessed.

The Minister makes exceptions in the Order. I do not find fault with the exceptions, but I do find fault with him for not excepting dairying land. After all the money that has been spent on dairying, after all the attention it has got in our agricultural economy since we got control of that agricultural economy, butter is the one and only agricultural product that has been rationed. On the face of it, it is bad business to require land hitherto devoted to dairying to be broken up for tillage purposes when we find we are sailing so close to the wind that we are in the gale at the moment. There are other exceptions that I think the Minister should have made. In the case of widows and in the case of orphans there are extenuating circumstances which would make exceptions in their case a great necessity. Speaking from memory, I think the British Government in their compulsory Orders during the last war made exceptions in these cases.

Coming to the effect of the Order itself, I want it to be clearly understood that I am not opposed to tillage. I am an advocate of tillage at all times. I believe that the conception of agricultural economy in an independent State like this should be based, as far as possible, on producing all the food necessary for man and beast in this country. I have always held that if we are to survive as a nation we must have a tillage economy. If, when we put that to the test, we find that tillage is not a paying proposition as compared with other forms of agriculture, such as the grazing of cattle purely for export for instance, then I say that there is a problem. It is not a question of which of them pays the better; it is a question of which of them the nation requires. If the nation requires a tillage economy, and if a tillage economy is not a profitable one, then there is the problem: why is it not a profitable economy? That is what we must get down to solve.

Those are my views on the tillage economy and tillage policy. Broadly speaking, I am a supporter of the Government's agricultural policy. In exceptional times like these, when we have to switch on to full production in order to produce 100 per cent. of the food required for man and beast, I agree with compulsion, but I consider that that compulsion should be applied intelligently. It is not sufficient for the Minister, or his officials, to make an order saying: "We have x acres under cultivation this year, and we want an additional acreage under tillage next year to provide our necessaries". Conceivably, we could double the acreage that we had under tillage this year and yet be short of essentials next year. Remember the trouble that you are bringing to the farmers of the country by requiring extra tillage, but it should not be too much for the Ministry to put up a recipe as to the agricultural products that we have been short of this year whereby we would be able to concentrate on the production of those commodities that we fell short of this year for our supply of food for man and beast.

We could, for instance, increase the acreage under tillage this year, as required by the Minister, by tilling the extra amount, the difference between one-sixth and one-eighth—I think it is one-twenty-fourth—of the arable land, by putting that under oats, and that would meet the Minister's Tillage Order, but it would not meet the requirements of the country. We grow about half the amount of wheat we require. Why is there not some inducement held out that will double the acreage under wheat this year? That is the most essential of all produce. If the submarine warfare, which is fiercest around these coasts now, is intensified, or even if it is maintained at its present sinkings, how much foreign wheat will we be able to get into this country at the end of next year? I doubt if we will be able to get any in, and if we have only half our requirements of wheat—and we can never hope to have a better harvest than last year—the inducement thrown out of 2/6 a barrel extra for the wheat grown this year over the price for the wheat grown last year is not a sufficient inducement, particularly as we are short of fertilisers, and particularly as the feeding of livestock is not a very profitable business at the present time.

It is nearly too late to remedy the wheat position now, and I do not think it was fair of the Minister or of the Government not to have brought this matter before the House in September so that the sowing of winter wheat, starting in October, could be regulated, and I see no obstacle to our having 600,000 acres of wheat this coming year if the matter were taken up seriously and taken up in time and a fair price offered for it. I am not saying that 37/6 a barrel for a limited supply of wheat is not a good inducement to grow, but remember that, as we increase our area under wheat, we are trespassing on land that is not as good wheat land as that which is growing wheat, and our average yield will go down and the price will have to go up to make the operation remunerative. Now, we are asked to grow extra crops. We will grow them. The farmer never failed to do his duty in this country. No matter how the appeal was made or what the manner of service, he always came up to it and he will come up to this, but while the agricultural position was forgotten we, Deputies, have been asked to go around the country to recruiting meetings for the Local Security Force, A.R.P., and so on—all good national works in their own way—but when you come back to consider the position, as we will have to look at it in this coming year, the first and most important local and national security force for this country in this coming year, and in the years ahead, will be the ploughmen of this nation. You can have 200,000 or 300,000 of the youth of this country marching to stirring tunes. There will be more glitter and show about it than about the fellow who is muck up to his neck producing the food that will keep those men walking and keep this nation independent of the submarine or any other warfare. No attention, however, was given to him, and if the farmer does not produce the exact surplus that is required, the fault is not with him but with the Government that did not give him proper direction when it made its appeal to him.

I do not want to indulge in politics, but we grow those crops. Have we a market? Have we a price? We have been considering the burying of hundreds and thousands of pounds in bogholes for a few hours this evening in this House. That money, extracted out of this agriculture to which you are now making this appeal to save the country, is being buried in bogholes, as I say, and in other ways equally as mad and insane as the burying of the money in bogholes. Agriculture in this country has been depressed from 1922 and 1923 up to the present time: first, by the deflation money policy of Britain which depressed the prices of agriculture; secondly, by the general depression in agriculture the world over; and, thirdly, by agriculture, and agriculture alone, having to pay the cost of the economic war. During those three scourges of Irish agriculture, agriculture went into debt to the tune of millions. It is still in debt. Is there any relief for that indebtedness of agriculture when you call upon it now to make a supreme effort to save the nation in the hour of danger? No relief whatever has been offered, and I should like to ask the Minister, when he is replying, to explain why relief is not offered and, if there is money to bury in bogholes, why is there not money to relieve agriculture? We will grow the stuff all right. You need not worry about that. The farmers will produce all the food necessary for man and beast in this country, but will they get a price for it?

We have at least 100,000 people idle. They cannot buy the food we produce unless we first of all give them money to pay for it. We must give them the money, and if we do, we have to pay for it in taxation. How is a farmer going to produce under these circumstances? We have in this House a Government, an Opposition and a Labour Party, and all practically agreed on the motion that has just passed about having an inquiry of some kind about unemployment. The Labour Party wanted it definitely, and the Government hushed it off for the present, but all Parties agreed upon an inquiry into the unemployment problem. If there is an unemployment problem so grave as to require a commission of inquiry, and if farmers are asked to produce more wheat, potatoes, sugar and the necessaries directly used for human food for which we have a market here, we must also produce animal foodstuffs in our farming economy. Our market for these, speaking nationally, would be our livestock. I should like to know from the Minister if he could mention any livestock outside dairy cows that will be a remunerative market for the animal food that we produce. Oats are selling at 12/- a barrel. The average yield, according to Government sources is something like 11 or perhaps 12 barrels to the acre. The minimum standard wage in County Dublin, and in the greater part of my constituency, would be £93 or £94 a year. It would take 12 acres of land to pay the wages of one man. It was not a princely wage at any time. Even at that low figure, will the Minister tell us what animals could be fed at 12/- a barrel and be remunerative?

Agriculture has been depressed for three or four causes, yet farmers are called upon to produce more and to change their economy. They want credit. What credit facilities does the Government offer? None. I cannot understand why responsible Deputies look askance at anyone standing up and saying what should have been said 18 years ago, that the British control our banking system. Why are farmers here not assured of the banking accommodation necessary to increase production? They are assured of it in Britain. The note issue here is not greater than it was before the war. The note issue in Britain is £100,000,000 more than before the war, and it is kept circulating by the volume of extra credit given. Here we want credit to produce more and we will pay for it. Has the Minister offered any credit facilities? No. It is all very well for the Minister to bring in an order and warn us of what is going to happen if by February 14th we have not made arrangements for increased tillage. If he carries out the order to the letter, he can take up land and work it and not pay annuities or rates on it. These are to be let accrue as a debt on the already overburdened owner of a farm, and when he gets it back after the emergency he will find himself owing more rates and annuities. I do not know how county councils will carry on if that happens to any extent.

While farmers may be driven into the position of having to spend extra money on the new economy the Minister is providing nothing for them. If I were to go to the Minister and say: "You require more tillage. I have no capital to till one-sixth of my land. Where will I get capital?" he could not tell me. Surely, if he is asking farmers to make a supreme effort the whole burden of that effort should not be borne by them. Why should not banks and financial houses here be called upon to bear their share of the burden? I do not suggest that they should give grants, but surely they could give credit. What is the security for that credit? It is the increased food, and also the obligation to protect the country. I am quite sure that when the Army Estimates come forward they will be considerably increased. Farming is a service of far more importance than the Army, because it is national service that is now required of agriculture. I am sure the Minister is looking at this question not from the Party point of view, but primarily from the point of view of producing the food necessary for man and beast without calling on any one class to make all the sacrifices. I put it to him that more will be produced by looking at the question in that way. I am sure that is the way he will approach it.

Let him not forget what agriculture has lost owing to deflation, owing to the general depression that prevailed, and by the economic war. I am not going into the rights and wrongs of these things now, or as to whether uncalled for burdens were piled on agriculture from which it has not yet recovered, but if farmers are called upon to bear this further burden, surely they should be accommodated with credit.

A month or two back in the harvest time we had a discussion here about the price of oats. The low price of oats at the season was indissolubly bound up with a shortage of credit. People grew oats. They had surplus oats in the aggregate, and, taking the long view, the Minister might be substantially correct when he said there was no real surplus. There might not be, but if I am pressed to pay a debt now and I have surplus oats, my first consideration is to get cash for it in order to pay that debt, and I cannot afford to take the long view and store that oats until next March in order to get a good price. If the Minister calls upon the farmers to produce, he should devise some machinery which will enable them to hold on to their crops and get a good price for them, instead of the profits of the whole effort going to line the pockets of speculative merchants.

I would call upon the Minister to make an exception in the case of dairying land. I know farms of 50 to 70 acres which have been dairying land for years, if not for generations. There is no fence on those lands. To ask owners to break them up and till a sixth is, in fact, asking the owners or occupiers to put a sixth of the land from growing good grass. They are not tillers: they are dairy people. Dairying is just as profitable to the nation and as essential at the present time as any other form of agriculture.

I know dairy people who come to me and I plough their land for them. They have put in a crop indifferently. It was the best they could do, as they did not know how to till. Their interest is in dairying and it was a punishment to compel them to till without giving any adequate national return. I consider that the land, in the way they were using it, was used—in the circumstances, within and without the emergency—to the best national advantage. I would appeal to the Minister to reconsider that question of dairying. As I said at the beginning, the dairying product of butter is now virtually rationed, if not actually so, in Dublin. Only two-thirds of the supply is now permitted, I understand, by the merchants to the traders. I believe that over the wireless we were informed that the price will be 154/- a cwt. for half-ton orders.

That may be a little digression, but I would like to remind the Minister that there are merchants who are cleverly refusing to supply half-ton orders and making the trader pay 159/- a cwt. I would suggest to the Minister that he, through his organisations handling this matter, see to it that where a trader gives a half-ton order or more and is entitled to it according to the rules and regulations now obtaining, the merchant should not be allowed to refuse that order and should be compelled to supply the butter at the lower price. That is a digression.

The point I was making is that this is the only agricultural product that at the moment it is found necessary to ration. Therefore, it is one of the weakest links in the chain, and I submit that land used for dairying purposes is as well used in the national interest as it could be used at the moment. I am sure the Minister will concede that dairying is a specialised form of agriculture, just as tillage and livestock raising are. As it is so essential, it should get equal consideration. I say that, and I am a tillage farmer, if I know anything about farming; and I press that very much for the Minister's consideration.

It was a great pity that, in this crisis that was coming upon us, and that we all saw coming, we did not take time by the forelock. It was a pity that our Minister for Supplies and Minister for Industry and Commerce, instead of fooling about the bogs, did not get in millions of pounds worth of raw materials necessary for our industries. Why was not £10,000,000 worth of timber brought in, with which we could be building houses now, as we have all the other raw materials necessary?

The Minister for Agriculture has no responsibility for erection of houses.

We are asked to provide food. It costs us a certain amount to produce it, and we have to get a price for it in order to carry on. There is no use in the farmers being compelled to produce food for a nation that is not working. They will not have the money to buy it. The Government has not showed proper foresight. Surely it did not take a prophet to see that war was coming after Munich, which event took place in September, 1938, I think, the year before war broke out? Why were the necessary raw materials not brought in in bulk and stored here to enable us to carry on? Again, we are asked to grow crops on land that has been impoverished by agricultural depression for ten or 15 years, through not getting an adequate amount of fertilisers. The golden opportunity was lost: the Government did not see that the raw materials to manufacture fertilisers were imported. I doubt if there is any potash in the country. There may be some camouflaged mixture that we are told is good for this or that. We may use it but, normally, we would not take a present of it. We have the factories here but we have not the raw materials. The result will be that, probably, with the increased acreage under tillage this coming year, if the figure is strictly adhered to and is no more and no less, we may not produce as much as we did last year, because of the shortage of fertilisers.

The relationship of the other raw materials required for industry is this: our industry is a market for our agriculture and if we have not the raw materials to carry on those industries and we are dependent on our industries here for our agricultural market, we will have no market. We have to realise that the people have to be fed. Our Government will devise some machinery by which we will get some price, but we will have to pay that price first in taxation before it can be given to the others to buy our stuff. It seems to me that we are in a dangerous position, in a very serious and precarious position. I would like the Minister to deal with this question of fertilisers. I must say that the industrial people have every sympathy for the agricultural community, and they see the shortage in the raw materials and that the curtailment of their activity in industry is curtailing our market. If there were time, I would have a lot more to say in opening this discussion.

I do not want to use even the extra time that happened to fall into our lap to air my own views any further. I would much prefer to see a contribution to the debate by 20 Deputies for a short time than have speeches by two or three for a long time. We want to get a discussion on this very important subject from different angles, from Deputies drawn from different parts of the country, representing different classes of the community and even different classes of the agricultural community. Of course, we must give the Minister ample rope—I hope not to hang himself—to take this House into his confidence. Deputies who have suggestions to offer to the Government and the Minister in this crisis will, I am sure, willingly make them. I want the Minister to understand that he is not to take anything I said in my opening remarks in a critical or hostile sense. If he feels that anything I said was critical, I would ask him to accept it as honest criticism of the position as I see it.

In conclusion, speaking for my own constituency in the County of Dublin and the large farmers there, I would ask the House to remember that if an effort is to be made under this order to increase agricultural production, that increase must come from an increased area cultivated on the larger farms. I say that because, generally speaking, the order has no application to the smaller farms. They are already cultivating more than one-sixth of their arable land. In fact, many of them are tilling land that is not arable at all. If, therefore, a big effort is to be made to get a big increase in agricultural production this order must apply essentially to the larger farms. I know that the large farmers in the County of Dublin are financially embarrassed. They put their case before the Government, but I do not know if the Government even acknowledged it. The Minister will see the danger himself if he is called upon to take up a farm and till it. He will say, in effect: "Well, I will do it if I must, but if I do it I will be liable for neither rates nor annuities". Yet, I am sure he would not concede that privilege to the embarrassed farmer, and say to him: "If you till the land required under this order I will see that you are not embarrassed by the sheriff in regard to rates and annuities during the tillage year 1941". I am anxious to hear what the Minister has to say on the motion.

I formally second the motion.

I gather that Deputy Belton, in sponsoring the motion before the House, made it clear that he was not proposing that the order requiring 16? of the arable land to be tilled should be annulled.

No; I went a long way beyond that.

I am glad to note that fact, because I agree with the Deputy that it would be inexpedient to annul this order. Indeed, I could conceive circumstances arising in which it would be legitimate for the Minister further to extend the order and require a higher percentage of land to be devoted to cereal and root crops in the coming year than has at first appeared desirable. Now, in normal circumstances, I think the more a Government keeps off a farmer's land the better it will be for the farmer, and for the country as a whole, but these are not normal circumstances. The world is at war, and the first duty of a Government or a Parliament is to ensure that the essential necessities of the community over which it presides will be secured in so far as we can secure them without dependence upon external sources. No one but an elemental idiot, of whom we have a few in this country, would dream of advocating an appropriate war policy as the proper policy for a period of protracted peace. One must remember that there are some gorillas in this country whose intelligence not infrequently falls below the level of the gorilla: who imagine that if something can be justified in a period of unexampled crisis, and if they happen to have made a bit of surplus money out of it, will urge that it ought to be adhered to for all time, and that anyone opposed to it is a traitor, and playing England's game and so forth. Well, in so far as the gorillas are human they are entitled to liberty and toleration in a democratic country, and we have to suffer them as gladly as we can. We have to praise ourselves with being democrats and in believing in individual liberty. We are jealous of preserving the gorilla's right to yap and yap freely, openly, and wherever he will, but we must not allow ourselves to be intimidated by his ferocious exterior or alarmed by the persistence with which he adheres to his simian views. We must treat him with patience and forbearance, and firmly resolve not to fall into the errors into which he would lead us if he could.

Bearing in mind then that we are dealing with a very exceptional situation, we have got to recognise that we are justified in taking exceptional measures to meet that situation. One of the first measures is to secure that the land of the country will be used in the best possible way to secure the most essential supplies. Now, the first thing that will occur to any intelligent body confronted with that problem is that, in the absence of adequate supplies of artificial manures, we may be putting a very serious strain upon the fertility of the soil. We have got to bear in mind that during the last seven or eight years the reserves that ought to have been built up in the fertility of the soil have not, in fact, been created. Now, I could say a lot about that, but in existing circumstances I do not know that postmortems on the past are desirable for the time being.

As Deputy Belton has said, we do not want to waste time. What we do want is to get the views of every rational man on what is best to do in the circumstances in which we find ourselves. I want to say that, conscious as I am of the heavy incursion that this compulsory tillage policy may make on the accumulated fertility of the soil, I think it ought to be made. I think it was against just such a crisis as this that prudent and far-seeing farmers were accumulating a surplus fertility in their land, so that if a serious crisis should ever arise they would have that surplus to fall back upon on the rainy day to carry them over the period when they would not be able to make their annual contribution to the enrichment of the soil. It is just like the man who puts into the Post Office Savings Bank a couple of shillings every week, while he is in funds, and accumulates £10, £15, or £20 there, saying to himself: "Some day I may lose my job. The unemployment insurance will help to keep me going, but that £15 I have laid by will be a very valuable aid to preserve my standard of living during my period of unemployment." He would be a fool who let his children go hungry or his wife go unshod because he was afraid to spend that £15 which he had saved against the particular day of crisis that had come upon him. Far from fearing to spend it, he should turn to it at once and prudently apportion it over the probable period of his distress. It might be that before he got his job back again, it would all be spent, but, in the last state, he would be no worse off than he would have been if he had never made the saving, and it is highly probable that before his accumulated savings were gone, the period of crisis would have passed and he could resume a normal budget founded on a weekly wage.

That is what the farmer should do now. It is a pity that we have not got more in the savings bank of the land, and if we on this side had had our way, that savings bank would now be well furnished and we could view the future with comparative equanimity. It is not well furnished, but it is not well furnished through other people's fault. It is going to help none of us to go into that question now, but such accumulated saving as is there—and it is substantial—may legitimately be used now. We must do everything we can to make the drain on it as light as possible, but such drain as maximum production makes necessary should be courageously undertaken, and it would be folly to pursue a policy of undue conservatism in the situation in which we find ourselves.

I think the Government and the community are entitled to make demands on the agricultural community, but, if they are, the agricultural community are entitled to make reciprocal demands upon the Government and the community they serve. If an industrialist contemplates setting up in this country, he goes to the Minister for Industry and Commerce and says: "I am prepared to employ 100 men and am prepared to produce a certain commodity, if (1) I get a trade loan, and (2) I get an adequate tariff or quota", and he always gets them. Now, I say that the agricultural community are entitled to go to the Minister and say: "We are not going to employ 100 men; we are going to employ half the entire population and we are going to fill the stomachs of the other half. We are not asking a trade union wage of £3 a week because the best we have ever been given is 30/-. At this stage, we are not raising that question, but we are asking this, that you will give us a price for our product on which we can live. Do not constrain us to produce the maximum production for your benefit, and when we have done that tell us to go and sell it in whatever way we can, that it is none of your business to help us to dispose of it. It is not just to force us all into production, and, when we have all produced, to leave us to be plucked by the speculator who knows that we have not got the storage to carry the crops you asked us to produce for your benefit. Therefore, we want you to say, if you desire the production of these crops: ‘On harvest day, I will take your crops from you at a fixed price'. It may be that storage considerations will require the Government to say: ‘You must keep them there on your farm until we are ready to take them, but on the day you thresh the oats, if you have storage and you put the oats into the loft, we will give you a price for the oats and you become the bailee of these oats for the Government. If you cannot thresh them, we will have to arrive at some agreement about the value of the stack; we will buy the stack and pay you for it, and you will hold it until we are ready to take it from you'." Similarly in regard to barley and similarly in regard to the other crops which the farmer normally regards as his cash crops.

I want to lay special emphasis upon this point. Once that scheme is put into operation, it may well be that not 10 per cent. of the farmers will find themselves constrained to take advantage of it, but the fact that the scheme is there creates a seller's market, while, if the scheme is not there, the farmer is trying to sell on a buyer's market. Let me tell a story to illustrate that point. In certain rural towns which I know well, a surplus of pigs developed and I approached the Pig and Bacon Commission—and I glady admit publicly that they were co-operative and helpful when I explained the problem to them—and got them to send an official buyer down to say: "I will take all the pigs available in the town on a given day". The first day he got a great gale of pigs; the second day he got a great gale of pigs again; the third day he got only about 15 pigs; the fourth day he got only about 15 pigs, and he began to ask himself whether it was not a waste of time to be coming down there. I said: "Wait, brother; if you are in any doubt as to the value of your advent to this town, although you only got 15 pigs, come round to the back-way where I will show you something". There were the farmers' carts lined up and there were men out bowing before them, apologising for the delay, telling them that in another moment their pigs would be attended to and asking them not to become impatient. The farmers were the lords of creation. There was the utmost attention and deference shown to them and the utmost anxiety to persuade them to keep their pigs for the buyers. A month before I had been in the same place, and I saw them with the rain pouring off them at 9 o'clock at night, and if they asked: "When are you going to take our pigs?" they were told: "Take your bloody pigs home. Whoever sent for you? Stand there and keep your trap shut until we are ready to attend to you, and if you do not like it, go home and take your pigs with you."

The fact that those men were now selling on a seller's market made them dignified, independent men, but while they were left at the mercy of the speculator selling on a buyer's market, when I saw them there, I thought of their grandfathers standing at Lord Dillon's rent office, with their hats in their hands, and begging his lordship to take the rent from them and being told that if they did not take those hats off and bend the knee, they would be evicted in the morning and being ordered to conduct themselves and not to be hustling and jostling in that way and inconveniencing the agent, Mr. Strickland. I thought then of the day when the Plan of Campaign came into operation and Mr. Strickland said: "In the name of God, give us your rent sometime. There is no hurry about it and you can give it any time." We changed the market from a buyer's market into a seller's market 50 years ago, and the Pigs Marketing Board, in their way, changed a buyer's market into a seller's market.

What I am asking the Minister to do now is, in regard to the produce which he is constraining the farmers to produce for the benefit of the community in the coming season, to change the market and make it a seller's market instead of a buyer's market. Is that asking too much? That is all I ask. I am not asking fancy prices; I am not asking extravagant prices; I am not asking a standard of living far in excess of what the farmers ever enjoyed heretofore. All I am asking is a simple thing: Change the market from a buyer's market to a seller's market and leave us to fix the prices, and by the experience I have quoted to you, you will probably find that, although your scheme is designed to be capable of handling 100 per cent. of the produce, in fact, it will not be called on to handle 10 per cent. I believe that when you are making a case, far from asking too much, you should ask too little. I think we might legitimately ask for far more for the farmers than I am asking now, but I am asking for something which I believe we can and ought to get, and ought to get now, because if we do not get it now we will not get the production, we will not get the crop. I shall confine myself to that request and make none other—that the Minister and the Government will turn the farmer's market next autumn from a buyer's market into a seller's market. If he does that, he can leave the rest to us. That provides for what the community is entitled to demand off the farmers, and that is all I am asking of the Minister on behalf of the farmers.

There is a third matter which requires attention. You may have the land and you may have the muscle but you cannot bring the land and the muscle together if you have not the wherewithal to effect the juncture. That wherewithal is either cash or credit. There are hundreds of good farmers who have not got cash and who cannot get credit, and I want to deal with them. But, before I go on to that matter, I want to deal with the question of the supplies of raw materials. There is not a tariff order ever made in this House or confirmed by it in which there is not a provision that where the Minister for Supplies, or the Minister for Industry and Commerce, is satisfied that the item tariffed is being imported as the raw material of an ex-war industry or as the equipment of any industry, the person importing is entitled to get a licence to import free of duty. Will you take off the raw materials and equipment of the average farmer the prohibitions, taxes, tariffs and quotas that at present operate to prevent his getting these materials and this equipment? A great many of the best farmers in this House come from the eastern counties.

In these counties, for years, they have had comparatively modern agricultural equipment. I come from west of the Shannon and I have seen the small farmers west of the Shannon trying to till their soil. I have seen the small farmers do that with the "laidhe" and, when they turned the land with the "laidhe," they had a harrow-pin, made by the local smith, tied in some cases to a donkey's tail and in other cases to a horse's harness. They started up and down until you would be sick looking at them and until they would be sick looking at the harrow-pin. At the end of a long day's work, the land was almost as rough as it was when they started harrowing. I watched my own men operate in that way until I was sick looking at them. Then I got a spring harrow. To a man like Deputy Belton or a man like Deputy Hughes, or a man like Deputy Allen, that, probably, seems no great event—that he got a spring harrow. But no greater revolution was ever precipitated in the parish in which I live. They came from miles to look at it. And we did as much in three "scribes" as the fellow with the harrow-pin would do in the whole day. That may sound a small thing to the man who normally employs labourers to do the work for him, but in the case of the small farmer who is trying to reach on his work, to deprive him of the spring harrow by raising the price above his capacity to pay is to impose upon him a servitude as cruel and as unnecessary as if you put him in penal servitude tramping a treadmill. We have no right to do that. If you want to promote the manufacture of that kind of article in Ireland, you should do it by subsidy. You should not do it by a method which makes it impossible for the little man to get things done. If you want spring harrows manufactured in this country and the manufacturers here cannot compete with the British manufacturers, then go to the Irish manufacturers and say: "What is the difference between you?" If they say: "It costs us £2 more to produce harrows in Ireland than it costs to produce them in Britain," then say to them: "Produce as many as you can and we will give you £2 per harrow. We will give you that sum from the Exchequer and that will put you on an equal footing with the English manufacturer." Then let them go out and sell them. If the Government wants to get the harrows manufactured here, let them even say: "Here is a grant of £3. That will give you an advantage of £1 per harrow. Go out and compete." But the one thing they should tell manufacturers they will not allow them to do is to raise the price of harrows to a point which makes it impossible for the small man in the west, or south-west, to buy them. The same applies to ploughs, mowing machines, scythes, sickles, spades and the other implements.

Are people in this House awake to what it means to the man who is trying to dig with a spade to find that every time he throws his weight on the spade the spade bends? Or, when half the time, his spade is split? Does anybody here realise the maddening thing it is digging potatoes with a fork from which the prongs fly out, leaving you with two prongs and a wide gap? The man who lives in Rathmines will say: "Why do you not go out on the tram to town and buy another fork?" It might be five miles to the nearest town, even if the man had the cash to buy the fork.

Let us admit that he is not so hard up that he has not the cash to buy a potato fork. But what man wants to doff his heavy boots, get on his light boots and cycle five miles to buy a potato fork? When he gets back the prongs may go again. It is terribly difficult to carry into this House the exhausting hardship which difficulties of that kind inflict on the people least able to bear them in rural Ireland. I do not want to dwell upon that matter further because I bear in mind that the movers of this motion want to hear the views of different Deputies upon it. But I say to the Government—take the tariffs off the implements of agriculture, and if you want to encourage the home manufactures, do it by direct subsidy.

I say, too, let us get as much manure as we can. If anybody can get good superphosphate of lime anywhere, the Minister should say he will give a bounty of £1 a ton on it, no matter where it is manufactured. It is vital that we get all the super we can wherever we can. Let the Minister say: "Wherever you can get super this year, we will give £1 a ton in respect of it."

If he does not say that I believe that large quantities of super which we could get will not come into the country, because the importers who would be able to get it will not risk getting it if they are not able to sell it at competitive prices with the Irish manufactured manure which is getting £1 subsidy from the Government. The matter of potash has been mentioned. I do not know that there was any shortage of potash last year, but if there should develop a shortage of potash there is a great deal of potash to be got out of seaweed. I do not say that that method should be adopted if you had Chilean potash at your disposal, but suppose there is a shortage of potash I believe that potash is extractable from seaweed, and if you get sufficient potash for the root crops then I think there are sufficient reserves of potash in the land to carry the cereals for a year or two, by which time I believe the acute nature of this crisis will have passed. Now, we come to the question of credit. There is no use in asking the Minister in a general way to provide credit in this country, unless you are prepared to tell him how to do it, and that is what I am going to do.

Go to the Bank of England——

There is no use, in my respectful submission, in blathering about currency and the Bank of England——

The Deputy can blather about it if he likes.

——and a whole lot of rámeis of that kind. The Bank of England my foot. The Bank of England has got nothing to do with it, and all this business about cutting ourselves free from sterling is all my eye. If you cut yourself free from sterling in the morning——

In moving this motion I said nothing about currency.

I am not attacking the Deputy at all.

I suggest to Deputy Dillon that he had better not raise that issue, lest others should follow.

I am not a bit afraid of it. I get so sick of reading in the Standard and ill-informed papers of that kind blather about the gold standard and cutting ourselves free from sterling, and getting out from under the dominion, of the Bank of England, that I think it is time somebody got up and said: “That is codology”. If those who are writing it knew anything they would know it is codology, but the reason they go on writing it is because they are so invincibly ignorant and incapable of instruction that until the crack of doom they will go on writing it; but it is right that some voice should be raised to say coram populo—before the country—that it is all rámeis and codology. If the rational elements in the country believe in that codology there is no salvation for anybody. But there is no use in saying it unless those who say it are prepared to say: “The position of credit is a critical one, but here is the way to solve it,” and that is what I am going to do, and I dare all and sundry to disprove one syllable of it. The situation is that a considerable number of farmers in this country need credit. The fact is that there are abundant funds in the bank provided that security can be got to satisfy the proper anxieties of the bank. Here is the way to do it. Under the Land Acts, up to the Land Act of 1932, the land annuity fixed for payment annually or semi-annually by the tenant purchaser was a sum related not only to the intrinsic value of land but to the ascertained capacity of the land to pay and leave a fair margin over from which the tenant occupier could keep his family and maintain a reasonable standard of living. Now, that is most important. Therefore, the land annuity was related not only to the intrinsic value of the land but to the capacity of the land to produce it. Under the 1933 Land Act, quite fortuitously and without any regard to the then value of the land, the land annuities in this country were reduced by 50 per cent.

I want the Government to go to the farmer who stands in need of credit and say: "Very well. Suppose your land annuity is £100 per year"—I am taking that as a round figure—"we let you off under the 1933 Land Act £50 per annum of that annuity. We are prepared to capitalise that remission at twenty years' purchase; that is £1,000. Having done so, we will issue to you £1,000 of land bonds No. 2, and on the day we issue them to you we will restore the amount of your annuity to the sum you were paying prior to the passing of the 1933 Land Act. You can take that Government security, that £1,000 in bonds, and go to your bank manager and say: "I am prepared to transfer those bonds to your name as collateral security for a fluctuating overdraft which will at no time exceed £800, you to give me authority to overdraw within the limit of £800 and to charge on that overdraft, in consideration of my collateral of Government Stock transferred, an interest rate of bank rate plus 1 per cent., that is at present 3½ per cent." Now, note well what would then proceed to happen. The farmer would be paying an annuity of £100, of which £50 would be earmarked for Land Bond Fund No. 2, and he would over 40 years extinguish the capital lent him in the form of bonds, and pay the appropriate rate of interest during the whole currency of the loan.

How much?

Four per cent. The Government would pay interest on those bonds, and would recoup itself for the interest disbursed out of the sum pouring in semi-annually to Land Bond Fund No. 2, thus ensuring for the farmer an income of £35 a year. The farmer would lodge his bonds in the bank, but do not imagine that that means he would have outstanding a loan of £800, because at certain periods of the year he would owe the bank nothing. When the purchase of stock, or of seeds or manures became necessary his overdraft would rise to a high figure, but in the harvest of the year the realisation of his cash crops would bring down his overdraft, and the sale of his fat stocks or forward stores might completely extinguish it. He might legitimately abstain from any saving during the period, because at the conclusion of the 40-year term fixed for the redemption of the annuity he would be possessed of a capital sum of £1,000, which would be his outright, in the form of bonds of the Irish Government, having attached to them no further annuity obligation, and which he would be free to leave as collateral in his bank, or which he could hand to his stockbroker and realise for cash at the price ruling for Government securities on the day of the sale. Now, that scheme brings together the credit-worthy farmer, who is willing to borrow, and the bank, which has in its vaults abundant cash which it is most anxious profitably to lend.

Why will it not lend it now?

Would the Deputy have patience? The reason it will not lend it now is that there is no security for it.

I should like to hear the House generally express an opinion on it.

The reason the bank cannot lend money now is that there is no security.

It is because its boss, the Bank of England, will not allow it.

What is the use in the Deputy talking like that? The Deputy is a man of business. He is a man who is dealing with the banks in large sums all the time, credit and debit, every day of his life. Does not the Deputy know as well as I do that if he or I should go into the bank and ask for large accomodation to finance a considerable transaction, mercantile or otherwise, the first question the bank manager would ask is: "What is your security, Mr. Belton?" or "What is your security, Mr. Dillon?" Is not that so? Deputy Belton might reply: "There are the title deeds of the property." I might reply: "There is the bill of sale of the merchandise; there are the shipping documents of my merchandise. Hold them against the arrival of my cargo." And the manager would say: "That is good security. Right, Mr. Dillon; we can negotiate these at any time. We will lend money on them. That is all right." Suppose I went in and said: "There is my farm." He would say: "No; I am not going out into the street to evict a man with the name of Dillon. There would be a riot outside my house, and they would break my windows, if they did not hang me. I will have nothing to do with bailiffs, emergency men or battering rams. If the best security you can give is the roof over your head, there is nothing doing. I would not lend you sixpence on it. I would not take it if it were given with a pound of tea." Suppose I go in and he says: "What is your security?" and I say "A thousand pounds in Government bonds——"

To be realised by evicting the farmer if he does not pay?

Not at all. If the farmer does not pay, the Government is the jury that will have to evict him.

And will the bank not have to evict the farmer?

The Government will.

What is the difference in being evicted by the Minister or the bank? I submit that this is going too much into the details of one aspect of the question and wasting the whole time at our disposal for the general discussion. If Deputy Dillon thinks it is only fools and madmen who advocate a national currency for this country I will meet him on any ground he likes.

I think the Ceann Comhairle should give him a room to himself and we will take him over here.

I have outlined a scheme which will provide credit for the farmers of this country. I understood Deputy Belton to ask me to clear up certain points which were not clear to him. He discourteously rejects the explanation which I understood him to ask for. I depart from the matter at once because I have no doubt other Deputies will fully understand the point I have made. It may be right to say this, that our object is to get credit for the farmers. Our object is not to turn the farmers of this country into perennial pensioners on the Government. I say if a farmer borrows £1,000 on the security I have outlined and then will not pay he ought to be evicted. He ought to be evicted, and the Government is the only power that can go in and evict him. The Government should evict him and take his land from him and give it to somebody who was prepared to be honest and to pay his debt and let the farmer go to blazes who was not prepared to pay the debt he honestly undertook to pay. It is not possible for a bank to do it, because local agitation would be stirred up against them and they would be unable to realise their security. It is for that reason that the farmers cannot get credit because the banks cannot take land as security. This means that I have outlined enables a farmer to pay back his loan in infinitesimal instalments that no joint stock bank could consider. It places the sanction of realisation on the shoulders of the Government, where it ought to lie, and it gives the bank a readily realisable security that enables them to give credit where and when credit is wanted. That is the solution to that problem and if these things are attended to forthwith we can face the future, albeit with anxiety, with confidence that we can get through this crisis as we have got through many another.

I regret that Deputy Dillon has occupied so much time, but I congratulate him on portion of his conversion at any rate. If the only result was to make Deputy Dillon favour tillage and the growing of beet and wheat, there is a good day's work done, even though he is still a bit of a lunatic as regards credit. I think the House is indebted to Deputy Belton for giving us the opportunity for this debate. I honestly say that because there are a few matters on which it would be better that there should be discussion. I would not agree with Deputy Belton with regard to the exemption of dairying land. I do not think any land should be exempt from the tillage order. I cannot see how any man is going to keep a stock of cows if he does not till something to keep them for the winter.

He could get it from the man who tills.

He could. There is enough of that sort of thing. Secondly, I agree with Deputy Belton in regard to wheat. I think the price of wheat has not been fixed at an economic price for this year. I have said that to the Minister before and I say it here openly. The difference in the costings alone in regard to wheat between this year and last year would be somewhere in the neighbourhood of about 35/- to 40/- an acre. The difference in the cost of seed wheat alone between the month of November of this year and the month of November of last year is somewhere about £11 to £12 per ton. We got seed wheat freely last October and November at £14 a ton. To-day the same seed is £25 10s. That would be roughly an increase of about 25/- an acre on seed alone. The Minister was allowing 2/6 a barrel. If you get a ton to the acre that is allowing £1. So that in seed alone the farmer suffers a loss of 5/-. To follow that up, there is an increase in the cost of artificials— as much of them as can be got—an increase in the cost of plough parts. God alone knows what the price of spare parts for reapers and binders will be, what will be the price of coal, if coal can be got next harvest, what the price of threshing is going to be. With all those things piled up, my honest conviction is that with an increased cost of £2 an acre, the present price would not clear the farmer and that he would require at least 40/- a barrel for wheat. I do not think that the Government have been fair to the farmers in regard to the wheat position. I am very much afraid that the agricultural community will again be inclined to gamble on barley this year as against wheat. Having a guarantee of 30/- a barrel for a certain quantity of barley, they will be inclined to gamble on getting away with it. I think it is a foolish policy on the part of the Government.

We have, as Deputy Belton says, about 50 per cent. of our requirements in bread for this year. Thanks to the Government, despite unbelievers like Deputy Dillon, we have 50 per cent. of our requirements this year, but I think, in view of the present world affairs, we would nearly want to make preparations for 100 per cent. of our requirements for the coming year. We are not going to get 100 per cent. of our requirements, even at 40/- for wheat, because—I again agree with Deputy Belton—the larger the acreage you put under wheat, the more land you devote to wheat, the more you are going from the eight to ten barrels an acre down to the six and seven barrels an acre.

Mr. Brennan

So, it is not such a good proposition after all.

You have at all times a certain proportion of the land of this country on which you can grow from eight to ten barrels of wheat to the statute acre. You have other land and, if you get from six to seven barrels an acre from it, you will be very thankful. That is the type of land that is considered fit only for oats. If a man is to put that land under wheat you must be prepared to make the crop pay him, and, therefore, the price of wheat will have to go up if you are to get an increased acreage. I do not think the Government are wise in persisting in the price of 37/6 a barrel for wheat. I think that policy is unjust to the agricultural community and it is going to work out in an equally unjust manner for the people of the country generally.

With regard to artificial manures, I would like to give the farmers who are convenient to beet factories a little advice, and that is to draw all the slaked lime they can. I give that advice as one who was an unbeliever at one time, but then I tried it and I found that it paid. I found that by using it last year I was able to increase my wheat output by two to three barrels an acre—and it increased that much on old lea ground. I got well over three tons extra to the acre in the case of beet. The slaked lime is to be had free at the factory. All the farmer has to do is to go there and draw it away. When artificials are so scarce it is a good job we have it.

I do not want to follow the harebrained scheme suggested by Deputy Dillon with regard to credit. In that connection we are in a rather extraordinary position. It is hard to get credit in present circumstances, and yet it is absolutely necessary that the farmers should get credit somewhere. Credit will have to be provided from some source. If an industrialist was able, as was pointed out by the Minister for Industry and Commerce a short while ago, to produce £55,000 he could get £90,000 from the Industrial Credit Corporation, and he was able to get, in addition, two drafts from the Government of £35,000 and £30,000. In that way he was able to make up £155,000 on his own £55,000. If the chairman of the Industrial Credit Corporation was able to do that in one room, surely the Agricultural Credit Corporation, in the next room, ought to be able to do the same type of thing?

What is wrong? Any hair-brained individual with an industrial scheme in mind can walk into a bank or into the Industrial Credit Corporation and draw out all he requires, and yet, when a poor farmer goes in for a loan, they almost lock the door and send for the Guards. There must be something wrong with the system of economy that creates a position of that sort. It was all right to take £155,000 of the people's money and sink it in a bog.

Mr. Brennan

It was bound to get lost, anyway.

Would it not have been much better if the £155,000 were scattered amongst the farmers of the country by giving them a little credit? We have the chairman of the Industrial Credit Corporation quite prepared to give £90,000 to a so-called industrialist who puts up £50,000, but the farmer will not get £200 or £300. There is something wrong with the system that allows that condition of things to exist. That system of economy should not be allowed to continue. If the farmers of this country are going to till, they must be given credit facilities. The Sugar Beet Company, bad and all as they are— and they are bad enough for anything —are prepared to give credit facilities to those who are growing beet. You can go there and order artificial manures and they will pay for them out of the beet crop. Could not something on the same lines be arranged in regard to the growing of wheat, whereby the miller will give a guarantee to the merchants and pay out of the harvest cheque?

Mr. Brennan

Then the miller might suffer.

Some scheme of that kind ought to be arranged. There is a big margin between the prices paid by the farmer last year and the prices he will have to pay this year. Last year his seed wheat cost him £14 and this year he will have to pay £25. He paid £4 for a ton of superphosphate last year and this year it will cost him £6 10s. or £7, if he can get it. These are the obstacles that lie in the way. We have a definite market for wheat. We should grow all we require and there is a safe market there for it. Even if Solomon came here—the Minister is not too bad; in my opinion he is next door to Solomon in some of the things he has worked out here—he could not guarantee that the oats grown in the coming year will be bought from the farmer next harvest or that the barley will be bought from him next harvest. If we are to judge by the British market to-day—and you can give it all the sweetness you wish —it will not pay to produce bullocks for it. It did not pay the farmer during the last five or six months to produce butter for it, and neither did it pay him to produce bacon for it. These were three losing games.

Nobody is going to guarantee that this time 12 months when the harvest is in the farmers will get anyone to buy from them or that there will be any English market to take our produce. Therefore, in my opinion, the land of this country should be put under wheat as far as possible. Let us at least guarantee bread for our own people. The Government should adopt this attitude: "Very well; we have to get bread for our people and we are prepared to pay the price." It is as well to give a bit extra to the farmer who grows wheat to feed the people rather than to give it by way of subsidy on the price of milk in order to supply butter to John Bull. Let us see that our own people will not starve. If there is any agricultural produce to spare let John Bull get it, if he pays for it. I do not know whether his money will be worth taking.

I do not intend to speak at any great length in this debate. At the outset, I would say that I do not think there is a Deputy of any Party in the House who does not agree that an effort should be made, having regard to circumstances of the present day, to grow the largest possible amount of necessary food for this country. The only disagreement that will arise amongst Deputies is as to the manner in which that might be brought about. I think there is something in what the last speaker said in regard to the production of wheat and it applies to other crops also, that probably the greatest inducement that could be offered is a price inducement. I have no doubt that in normal times the price at present offered for wheat would have been considered fairly good, but circumstances, owing to the international situation, have changed and what might have been a good price a few years ago is not necessarily a good price now. The inducement to grow an increased quantity of wheat must be made as strong as possible.

As Deputy Corry has pointed out, much of the land that grew wheat in recent years has deteriorated and must necessarily produce a much smaller quantity of wheat next year than it did this year or that it will produce next year, should the crisis continue. I think anybody familiar with wheat growing will know that good wheat has been grown for two and three years in succession on the same land, but many farmers, I have no doubt, will engage in what I consider the rather fantastic operation of growing wheat for the fourth time on the same land, some of it with very little manure, as manure is not available. Anybody who has experience of wheat growing will know what the quantity and the quality of wheat produced under such conditions must be. I leave that question to those who represent the tillage counties, because I believe that we must rely on these counties, to a large extent, for the production of the most important crops. Any inducement to increase home-grown food supplies must be mainly directed to those counties if you want to produce the best results. If you wish you may endeavour to get increased tillage in other counties, but you will not get the same experience of crop production amongst farmers in these counties. The land will not be as well tilled and will produce less than it should produce, while the crop will not be of as good a quality as can be produced in the tillage counties.

I am principally concerned with a matter to which Deputy Belton referred in his opening speech—namely, that certain allowances should be made for people carrying on dairying. Deputy Belton ably explained the reasons why the dairy farmer should be exempted, but the main reason why the dairy farmer should be exempted is not based on the case made by Deputy Belton, good as it was. I am not making the case that dairy farmers in counties such as Tipperary, Limerick and parts of Cork should not be asked to produce any tillage. I think it is up to them to produce at least the necessary foodstuffs for the stock on their lands. The dairy farmer should be asked to produce at least that quantity, but I think there are reasons why he should not be asked to produce animal foodstuffs beyond these requirements until it is proved that they cannot be got otherwise, and I believe they can. I think it will be admitted that the dairy farmer is engaged in an essential industry, that the production of milk, butter and beef is as vitally necessary as the production of cereals and other crops. If you do not admit that dairying and beef production are as essential as tillage, then my argument collapses, but I urge that the production of milk, butter, store cattle and beef is quite as essential a part of our agricultural economy as any other form of production. If you persist in compelling the dairy farmer to till one-sixth of his arable land, what will happen is that you will compel him to get rid of some of his dairy cows. That may or may not be right; I hold that it is not. I hold that such a policy is not in the national interest. The arable portion of the ordinary dairy farmer's land is the portion on which he grazes his stock. There are other portions which are not arable, and which may be used for other purposes—such as producing the hay necessary for the winter feeding of the cattle.

If you compel a farmer who has 10 or 12 cows grazing on 20 acres of land, to till one-sixth of that land he will have to get rid of one-sixth of these cows—probably two cows. The general result will be that you will have a diminution in the cow population. That may or may not be satisfactory. I hold that it would not.

I contend that the greater portion of the increased tillage should be confined to the tillage counties. I am satisfied that in counties outside the dairying counties—in the Minister's own county, and in Deputy's Allen's county, for instance — there are numerous farmers who are twice as well versed in tillage as the ordinary dairy farmer would be. I am talking as one who knows something about tillage. I am quite certain that in these tillage counties there are numbers of farmers prepared, and even anxious, to till much more than one-sixth of their arable land if a proper inducement were held out to them. You can get all the grain you want in the tillage counties. I do not mind what inducement is offered to them. I do not mind if farmers in the dairying counties even have to contribute to the inducement to be offered to farmers in the tillage counties, but I do say that it is as essential to the national economy to protect the dairying industry, to see that the present number of cows, and the same quantity of milk, butter, and other products are maintained, as it is to produce crops.

We are a very varied agricultural community, and what applies to one district does not apply to another. We may have our differences on that point, but I think the Minister realises as fully as I do that there will be some difficulty in enforcing a general compulsory tillage order. Perhaps the Minister felt that he could not get out of it in any other way, that it had to be a general order or no order, but it may be that in the administration of the order afterwards he can find a way out of the difficulty.

On the matter of credit, I think a word is desirable. I have a lot of sympathy with what Deputy Corry says as to the facility with which industrialists can borrow and the extreme difficulty with which a farmer can get anything. I think Deputy Corry expressed that rightly. I think it would be almost as easy for a camel to get through the eye of a needle as it is for the ordinary farmer to approach any of the existing lending organisations and borrow twopence—it cannot be done. Some method or other must eventually be discovered. I will not occupy the time of the House in expounding a remedy. I have my own views on the subject, but it would take more time than I should like to occupy to give my views. There will be another opportunity for that.

I do want to say that, although we may get the necessary acreage of tillage, we will not get it properly done, we will not get it properly seeded or properly cared for unless some credit facilities are provided for the farmers who have to engage in it. I wish to draw the Minister's attention particularly to that. There must be some way out of the difficulty, and I hope the matter will not be lost sight of. In conclusion, I would again ask the Minister to consider the possibility of not requiring people in the dairying districts to produce the full quota of tillage unless no other way out can be found.

I agree with some of the previous speakers who said that this debate may be helpful. I believe it may be, because it is evident that every speaker, no matter from what side of the House he spoke, was only too anxious to do what is best in the circumstances. It is only from that point of view that I want to speak, to point out what the difficulties are, and to invite solutions for those difficulties. In considering this question in the Department of Agriculture and with the Government. the position was that we had sufficient animal products in the way of dairy produce, eggs, poultry, etc., for our own population and, in fact, sufficient to carry on the normal exports we had been carrying on until the commencement of the war. What we did require was sugar, wheat, and animal feeding stuffs. These items are all to be got by increased tillage, and that was the reason why we set out to get increased crops so that we could feed our own population and, if possible, continue to maintain the number of animals we had in the country in case our imports were either lessened or cut off completely. That is the sort of problem we had in mind. It is not exactly the same as some Deputies have expressed here when, for instance, they said that the production of milk is as important from the point of view of the country as the production of wheat, or the production of butter is as important as, say, the production of malt or barley. That was not exactly the problem, but what was important from an economic point of view. We had in mind what we were in need of in case of a total blockade or in case our imports were cut down. Therefore, we had to look for the grain crops in particular, and also for sugar beet.

I think it will be admitted by everybody, in fact I am sure it would be advocated by everybody here, judging by the type of speeches made, that where a farmer produces a crop for human consumption he should be paid a remunerative price for that crop. I claim that for wheat and beet the farmer has been paid what might be regarded as a fair price for these crops. Deputy Belton, I think, expressed what even I would agree with when, talking about wheat, he said that under ordinary circumstances, a price of 37/6 per barrel is a good price and would give a good profit to the farmers who were growing wheat and who will continue to grow it. But he has some doubt whether that price will bring us 100 per cent. of our requirements. I agree that it will not bring us 100 per cent. of our requirements. I am afraid, however, that we would have to pay an outlandish price for wheat in order to get 100 per cent. of our requirements. If we paid 40/-, we would probably get more; if we paid 50/- we would get more, if we paid £3 we would get more. But I am not sure that even £3 a barrel would bring us 100 per cent of our requirements.

We have to consider this matter from the point of the consumer. We have to take a reasonable view. Knowing that we are paying the farmer what is a fair price, are we justified, then, in putting on another 5/- or 10/- a barrel in order to go to near 100 per cent. of our requirements? It might be better to say to the consumer that if a crisis were to occur, and if we were to pay the necessary price for wheat to continue the loaf as it is with 100 per cent. flour, with 70 per cent. extraction, and so on, the loaf would reach such a price that it would be practically unpurchasable. It might be better to say to the consumer that in a crisis like that, if we ever reach it, we would have to mix in more pollard with the flour, perhaps some barley meal, perhaps some oatmeal, in order to keep the loaf at its present price. In any event, we will have to keep the loaf at its present price, although it may be inferior to what it was before the war. But it is better to have it a little bit inferior at the present price than to have a first-class loaf at three times the price.

I doubt that.

I may be exaggerating when I say three times the present price. Perhaps I should say one and a half times the present price. That is the sort of problem we have in mind. We have to look at it in that way. I agree that where the farmer is producing human food he should get a fair price. I think he has got that for wheat and beet and also for malting barley. As to the other things, however, such as growing barley for feeding and growing oats for feeding, the farmer is growing them for his own animals or for the animals of another farmer. The oats and barley are either used by the farmer himself, which they are to the extent of 90 per cent., or sold to another farmer to the extent of about 10 per cent. of what is produced. As far as I can see, it is not advisable that the Government should interfere at all in that matter. But if Deputies think it is advisable that the Government should interfere——

You have interfered already. You have compelled them to do that.

We have compelled them to grow the crops. That is a different matter. I am talking about where the farmers exchange the crops. We have compelled them to grow them because, as the Deputy knows, we have heard of cases of farmers who would not grow them unless compelled; in other words, they would keep cows.

When you do that, you should guarantee them.

I do not think so. We have heard Deputies claiming that the farmers who have cows would not grow feeding stuffs unless compelled to do it, and they would expect to get oats and barley from some other farmers. But there may not be some other farmers to grow them. In fact, it is quite likely that before the next harvest there will be a shortage of feeding stuffs, of oats and barley, even though some farmers may have a surplus. I say that where it is a matter of farmers growing oats and barley for themselves, and by that I mean all the farmers, there is no good reason why the Government should interfere to help in the marketing of the grain, because any interference would only make it dearer on the farmers who buy it. I do not know of any satisfactory scheme, but if a satisfactory scheme can be put forward for dealing with that problem, I would be very glad to examine it and to adopt it, if it is a good and feasible one. I do not like to see farmers having to sell oats to dealers or speculators, as they are sometimes called, at a low price, and the oats being sold afterwards at a much higher price before it reaches the farmer consumers. I should like to stop that if possible. It has not been done on a big scale.

Does the Minister not know that it has occurred already?

It has occurred, but on a very small scale.

Does he not know that just now barley has jumped 7/-?

As I say, it has occurred on a very small scale. The amount of oats and barley held by dealers, speculators, and so on, in this country is very small, and I do not see how you could stop that altogether. I think nobody could stop that altogether.

You can.

I do not think you can stop it altogether, but if it is not taking place on any sort of considerable scale I think we should take no notice of it.

The Minister is prepared to consider any scheme put up?

Yes, certainly, but I cannot see any scheme that could be put up that would leave the existing merchants with their existing stores out of account, and if you take the existing merchants and their existing stores into account in the scheme it means that the Government, if you like, will come into it and are going to employ these people as agents. If not, all the Government can do is to fix the price, and if you do that——

You could guarantee a percentage of the price.

To every farmer?

Well, I should like Deputy Belton to go into that again. He claims to know a lot about finance—high finance, if you like—but come down to simple things and the position is that you have nine farmers out of ten who grow oats and do not sell any of it, and only a very small percentage of them who do sell it. If you were to guarantee a percentage of the price, it is quite possible that they might claim some credit on their oats, but nine out of ten of them will not sell it.

That would be dealing with details.

Yes, I agree, but these details are very difficult to get over. Another point is this: When we are talking here about the farmer who wants to sell his oats and barley, I cannot conceive of a good farmer, who only tills one-sixth of his land, as this order prescribes, having any oats or barley for sale. I defy any farmer in this Dáil to get up and tell me that a farmer—a good farmer, at any rate— if he only tills one-sixth of his land, would have any grain at all for sale— at least he would have very little of it for sale. I know that well, just as every farmer Deputy here knows it.

What about a poor farmer?

Does the Deputy mean a farmer with poor land?

Yes, and with very little stock.

He does not come into this. The poor farmer, with poor land, and very little stock, would till in any case. If he cannot have stock on his land, he tills that land. That, by the way, covers another point. Deputy Dillon and other Deputies talked about the credits that were necessary for tillage. Deputies who have been in tillage and who understand it know very well that the finances necessary for tillage are much less than the finances necessary for grazing, and if a farmer has 100 acres well stocked, and if he has put ten acres or 20 acres under tillage, he has more than enough to finance his tillage operations.

But with the live stock he will turn the money over quicker.

What if he has not got it?

If he has not the money, then it does not arise out of the Tillage Order. As I say, our object in this was to try to get over the difficulty of not getting in the grain that we wanted. The question of artificial manures comes in now. I know that you will not get as good a crop without artificial manures as you will get with them if they are properly applied, but let us not make too much of this question. Take the peak year of the consumption of artificial manures in this country. I suppose 1938 and 1939 would be regarded as about the same as peak years for the consumption of artificial manures. Take one of these peak years and I think you will find that we could not have had any appreciable per centage of our crops manured at all.

For instance, there is a great deal of talk now about potash for potatoes, and some people think that potatoes cannot be grown without potash. Now, it is quite evident that with the amount of potash used in this country, not more than 20 per cent. of the potatoes grown here got any potash at all. It is the same with the grain crops. Whether they were grown successfully or not I cannot say, but they were grown without artificial manures.

Not wheat?

Only very little, I should imagine.

On manured ground, very successfully.

But not on any other ground.

Accordingly, we are not doing what is unknown if we have to do without artificial manures. I admit that we will have a lesser yield, but we can grow the crops. We also hear talk about destroying the fertility of the soil. Now, I would not be a bit afraid, if it were a case of my own land, of growing, for three or four years, the ordinary rotation of crops without artificial manure. I know that the land would not be as good at the end of the three or four years, but I would not be afraid of doing so, and I am quite sure that I would be able, within two years anyway of the war being over, to get the land back to its former condition. I am quite sure that it would be easy to restore it to what it was before.

With regard to artificial manures, the position is bad. Things change so rapidly and so often that, every day, the position appears different, and usually appears worse. I can say that. Now, we will have enough nitrogenous manures. I have said that all along, and I think there is no doubt about it. We will certainly not have enough potash, or nearly enough. We will have some, but very little. That is the position with regard to these things. That is certain about these two, and the only one about which there is any doubt is the one about which there has been doubt all along, and that is phosphates which, of course, is most important. The position about phosphates for the last two or three months was that we were fairly certain we would have 50 per cent. of what we had last year, and that we hoped that we might reach 70 per cent. That is still our position, but the hope is not as good now as it was a month ago, and that is all I can say about that.

Will we have any pure potash?

Just a little. It will practically be negligible.

Old stocks only?

That is all, only old stocks. We will have nearly as much compound manures as last year.

Will there be any potash in it?

Yes, but there will be very little free potash. Now, talking about the seaweed, as far as I can get information on this question—there are varying opinions, but the best opinion I can get on this question of extracting potash from seaweed is that it would be cheaper to bring the seaweed as it is into the middle of the country—into, say, the outskirts of Mullingar, just to take an example— pay the transport, bring it to a farmer near Mullingar and let him spread it on his land, than to manufacture potash from the seaweed and then transport the potash here. That gives you an idea of how uneconomic it is to manufacture potash from seaweed.

I have touched upon the point made about dairying. There is no reason that I know why dairying should be exempt from the order, because the position is that we want grain grown for human food as well as for farmers. A dairy farmer cannot expect to get grain from someone else because that person may want it. Therefore, he must grow it himself. The only reason that could be put forward why dairy land should be exempt is that it was exempt in 1917 and 1918. But there was a different position here at that time. We were then part of the United Kingdom and the production of milk and cream was very important. We are not now part of the United Kingdom, and we have plenty of cream, plenty of milk and plenty of butter, too, even if we have to go short of it for a couple of weeks. Deputy Belton mentioned that widows and orphans were exempted by the British during the last war from the terms of the order.

I think so.

We would have terrible trouble if we exempted widows and orphans. In fact, it might lead to an increase in the number of widows here. Deputy Belton asked why more money was not devoted to agriculture instead of to the development of bogs and turf.

I said that, too.

No matter how many millions are devoted to agriculture that argument could be used. If we gave £20,000, £30,000 or £100,000 to something else that argument could be made. Really the position is that we have given many millions to agriculture. I do not want to delay the House by dealing with that position now, as Deputy Belton wants this motion considered apart from the extraneous subjects. With oats making 12/- a barrel, I do not claim that tillage farmers are making fortunes. I think they might make the crop pay and not lose anything at 12/- a barrel. On the other hand, most animals at present prices would pay if fed on oats at 12/- a barrel. Farmers who can produce oats at 12/- a barrel do not lose, but I agree that they will not make fortunes. If farmers can get oats at 12/- a barrel, the next question is, can they make animals pay at that price? I think they can, for instance, for feeding calves, cattle, and for a certain proportion of pig feeding. In any of these cases I think it will pay to produce oats at 12/- a barrel.

Is it not a fact that the Order has had the result of producing too much oats?

I do not know about that. I will not go into the currency question now, but I should be glad if Deputy Belton and Deputy Dillon had a debate on it some time, until we see what it is all about.

Mr. Brennan

But not in the House.

We want a more intelligent audience.

The other point I want to deal with was one raised by Deputy Dillon regarding credits. I think that scheme was outlined before, either by Deputy Dillon or by some member of his Party. I remember reading or hearing of the scheme, but I am not aware that it ever came under the very close consideration of the Government, or of anybody in my Department. What strikes me about it is this: That if farmers had to take bonds, and had to pay the Land Commission annuities against them—5 per cent. was suggested by Deputy Dillon—if the bonds were not being used the farmers would lose. They would not be getting sufficient interest on the bonds to pay the annuities back to the Land Commission. If the bonds were being used, and if farmers could get loans from the banks another trouble would arise. If all the farmers used the bonds for credit, and on a rough calculation some £50,000,000 or £70,000,000 would be involved, I do not know what they would do with all that credit or with one-tenth of it. All the seeds, manures and implements used in tillage for a year would not represent more than £2,000,000. If the farmers commenced to buy cattle or stock they would be buying against one another, and would eventually drive prices against what would be fair export prices. Then, when the position settled down and they had got what they wanted, the animals would have to be exported probably at a loss, so that a large amount of credit given to farmers at the one time would eventually do a great deal of harm.

These are objections to the scheme that strike me, but there is no reason why the proposition should not be examined more carefully, to see if anything could be done in that way. And talking of credit, I do not think things are as bad as Deputies suggest. I have never believed whether in Opposition or on those benches that the Agricultural Credit Corporation was as bad as some Deputies suggest. If farmers go to the Agricultural Credit Corporation with a fair proposal, and if the corporation comes to the conclusion that they are borrowing only sufficient to carry on, not overburdening themselves with debt, and are likely to pay off loans they will get them. The complaint is made that it is a slow method. It is slow, and three or four weeks seem to be a long time to a person who is looking for money, if he gets it at all. The Agricultural Credit Corporation is there to make loans of some magnitude if people want to restock land and have a good case. The county councils have a scheme for getting seeds or manures.

The trouble is that they do not give grants.

In the case of a small loan the Department will deal with it, but if it is over £40 the Agricultural Credit Corporation will deal with it. Talking of loans over £40, I notice that the number of applications to the Agricultural Credit Corporation last year was extremely small, there being only about 20 applications.

I know 20 applicants who were turned down. There is no use in applying.

They should try again. There has been a good deal of talk about want of credit for farmers. In the first place, some people who are talking about credit for farmers do not understand the meaning of "credit". What they really mean is giving farmers something that they will not pay; men who cannot possibly pay back they are so far gone. We have that in every class. There are big shopkeepers and others who got loans and went broke. There are people in every line of business, publicans, doctors, and solicitors who have gone broke.

What happened that they are so far gone?

They fell out.

Does the Minister not think that his policy might be responsible?

Of the 400,000 farmers here Deputies may be sure that there are a few of them will never do any good. Some people have that type in mind. It is not credit for that type they are thinking of, but credit for men who cannot do anything for themselves, to whom no institution could give credit. The other point I have in mind is that every year I hear a great deal of talk about the need for credit at harvest time, and the difficulties farmers have in getting credit. I have never had pointed out to me, although I have asked the question for the last six or seven years, one field that was left unsown for want of credit. It was suggested right round that men could not get seeds or manure.

If he was not able to sow it, he let it as conacre, though it was not in his own interest to do that. The Minister talked about reduced fertility a moment ago, but that was the best possible way one could reduce it.

I should like to know from Deputy Belton when he is concluding, or afterwards, if he can make any suggestions for dealing with these difficult problems, and I think the two most difficult are the marketing of the grain from one farmer to another and that of credit.

There are two questions I would like to ask the Minister. Would he look into the question of land annuities in arrear, and consult the Land Commission regarding those cases—I think they are principally in Waterford—likely to be evicted shortly? This is not a time for that. It is quite possible that, if anything of that sort takes place, the land will not be cropped this year at all, and it will be a national loss. If it is his scheme to get the greatest fertility it would be unfortunate that this should occur just now. Will he look into that?

Secondly, will the Minister consider those cases in which, if tillage were to take place, there would be a loss of productivity on that land?

We have taken that into account.

Regarding Article 7 (c) (4), if my interpretation is correct, if the Minister takes over land by a nominee he will not pay the interim rates on this land.

The Deputy is correct.

Who will pay the county councils?

The owner will pay.

As there is a time limit to this debate, I intend to be brief, though I do not think it wise or desirable that there should be a time limit to a debate of this importance. An Order of this kind carries with it the same powers as an Act of this House. It is essential that any Order, if there is a motion to annual it, should be given at least the same consideration in this House as a Bill that is being introduced.

There are just a few very important points which have been raised in this debate, and I am glad that both the Minister and Deputy Corry have admitted that this motion has had some useful effect. This question of tillage is undoubtedly the most important one that faces the country at the present time. Anyone who happened to read in to-day's paper the statement of the late British Ambassador to the United States regarding the position of imports and exports and external trade generally must realise that there is a very, very serious year facing this country. For that reason, all the brains and intelligence that can be mobilised to the solution of this problem should be mobilised at once. The farmer is being compelled by this Order—which is equivalent to an Act of this House—to undertake a certain percentage of tillage. The farmer, as far as I know, does not object to this Order. I have not yet met a farmer who says that it is unjust for the State to take upon itself the right to compel him to put a certain amount of his land under tillage, but there is not one farmer who does not assert and demand that, when the farmer is compelled to do this in the national interest, he should at least be guaranteed a remunerative return for his labour.

In considering what return he is getting, let us consider the average yield of tillage, which has been ascertained by Departments of State. Figures have been published for the four years ending 1936 regarding the average yield of wheat, barley, oats and potatoes. Those four years were, to a large extent, very favourable years for tillage. According to the figures published in official statistics, we find that the average yield for wheat in the Twenty-Six Counties for those four years was eight and a half barrels per acre. At the official price last year of 35/-, that would bring in a gross return of £14 7s. 6d. per acre. That is the return which the farmer gets for putting an acre of his land under tillage. I do not think there are any official or reliable statistics published to show the cost of production of crops. In this House I have frequently asserted that it is a grave shortcoming on the part of the Department of Agriculture in having failed to provide the necessary statistics of costs of production.

We know that, during the years 1917, 1918 and 1919, when compulsory tillage was enforced under the British Government, official statistics of costs of production were compiled and published by the British Government. Why did our Government refuse or fail to continue that system of publishing costs of production? It is only on those costs that one can ascertain whether a crop or a price is economic or otherwise. I have also frequently pressed in this House that the Department, in order to demonstrate that their views and methods are sound, should undertake the management of farms in different counties. In this way they would be able to ascertain, first of all, the cost of production and the average yield, and would also be able to demonstrate to farmers the most efficient methods of farming. Since the Department has not adopted this suggestion and has failed to publish costs to show whether farmers are making a profit or not, I say they are sidestepping their responsibility, adopting a shuffling attitude, and simply allowing present uneconomic conditions to prevail. They are failing to take any steps to remedy those conditions or to face up to their real responsibilities.

As I have said, the price of an average acre of wheat is £14 7s. 6d., and the cost of production, as any practical farmer could tell the Minister, cannot be less than £15 per acre. It will be seen clearly, therefore, that on the average crop there is no return whatever. Of course, it is the crops which yield over the average of eight-and-a-half barrels per acre that produce a profit. When we take eight-and-a-half barrels as an average, we must remember that there is a very large percentage of the acreage under wheat producing less than that and, therefore, the production is at a very great loss to the farmer.

In connection with oats, the position is even more serious. According to official statistics, the yield of oats in this State is 11 barrels per acre. The price during the past year was 12/6 per barrel, so that the return the farmer gets from an acre of oats at that price is £6 17s. 6d. I do not think anyone would suggest that under any system of farming oats can be produced here at that price, and in respect to that I assert that the Government have failed completely. At the outbreak of the war last year, the price for oats improved and was considered by farmers to be fairly satisfactory. The oat crop for 1939 was, I think, sold at about 15/- per barrel. Less than three months after, the price went up to 30/- a barrel. I suggest that it was not the unfortunate farmer who spent nine months producing that crop that got the profit, but rather the profiteering middlemen. They reaped the three months' profit and the Minister apparently stood by. The Minister has frequently suggested that it is not desirable that he should intervene in the matter of marketing, but surely he must realise that he has responsibility to ensure that the producer will get for his product a price which will bear some relation to the price at which that product is ultimately sold to the consumer.

If the Minister allows the profiteering that took place in regard to the oat crop last year to be repeated in the future, then I say he is not doing his duty to our producers and to the tillage farmers. In fact, he is failing to carry out the duty which the order we are discussing imposes on him. He allowed a profit of 100 per cent. to be made on the oat crop last year, and, as far as one can gather, is not prepared, even now, to take any steps to prevent a repetition of that criminal profiteering. In regard to the oat crop for the present year, the Minister almost threw up his hat in the other House when a discussion took place there on the question as to how farmers were to dispose of their surplus oats and barley, and said that question had been solved; but how? By compelling the unfortunate farmer to sell his produce at an uneconomic price, the oats at from 12/6 to 12/9 per barrel, and a very large percentage of barley at from 17/6 to £1 per barrel. Now there has been a very substantial increase in the value of those products, and who is going to reap the benefit of that? In my opinion it is not the man who is complying with this order and taking all the risks involved in increasing tillage, but rather the idle profiteering middleman. Unless the Minister is prepared to take steps to prevent that profiteering, then I assert he is not doing his duty to the tillage farmer.

There is one other matter that I should like to refer to, and that is the utilisation of our produce for pig feeding. The price of pigs has been fixed at 67/-, but the producer is being compelled by the profiteering rings of bacon curers to sell his pigs at 62/-, live-weight. The Minister is allowing the profiteers to get away with that robbery. Surely the Minister should feel that he has some responsibility towards producers who are being compelled by him to increase production. In conclusion, I would ask the Minister to include the rape crop amongst the tillage crops provided in the order. On inferior land, in the mountainy districts, this crop is required for the feeding of stock much to the same extent as turnips and mangolds and other root crops, and for that reason I think it should be regarded as a tillage crop. It is grown to a large extent in the poorer districts.

The Minister conceded that a fixed price of 40/- for wheat would induce the production of more wheat, and said that any shortage we may have will have to be made up by diluting the flour and raising it to the 100 per cent. level. Therefore, we have to choose between a higher price for our bread and an inferior bread. I think an extra price would encourage a 100 per cent. production of wheat, and that the public, on the whole, would vote overwhelmingly for having a 100 per cent. wheaten bread. I think the Minister's policy should be to get enough wheat grown to give us that 100 per cent. wheaten bread. I suggest to him that he should go further up the scale from 40/- to 45/- per barrel, and see what that will do in regard to the production of wheat. It is a pity that was not done earlier. I think myself that 45/- a barrel would secure for us 75 per cent. of our grain requirements. On the question of interfering and fixing the price of oats, which was referred to by Deputy Dillon and Deputy Cogan, I think this matter of holding on to oats or cashing it in harvest time all depends on the financial position of the farmer, and in my opinion if adequate credits were provided for the farmers they would solve that problem. The farmer would be able to hold his grain and take a risk of getting a higher price for his oats or perhaps a lower price, or even feeding the grain to animals. I should be more inclined to support the view of the Minister as regards providing adequate credits for the farmers, so that they would be enabled to hold the crop until a suitable opportunity presented itself for marketing.

It is a terrible pity that more time was not given for the discussion of this important subject. I am certain there are Deputies in all parts of the House who were anxious to speak on it. I know at least eight or nine Deputies myself who were anxious to speak, and who could do so with effect and with practical knowledge.

Deputy Dillon was rather extravagant in his language and one would think that he was the only Deputy who possessed any intelligence or any knowledge about finance or currency. I did not deal with finance or currency at all, nor, when dealing with the question of credit for the agricultural industry, had I in mind the position of the needy farmer or industrialist who wanted to borrow a lump sum to speculate with. What I was concerned with was that the national credit system of this country should pump sufficient credits into both agriculture and industry to put more purchasing power into the pockets of the public and thereby enable them to pay the price for the crops we produce. That can be done in only one way, that is, by our controlling credit.

No, control of credit. We have as much right to control our credit and currency as New Zealand, Australia, Canada, South Africa, France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark or any other nation in the world. We are the only free nation in the world which has not got control of it. It appears as inflation to Deputy Allen and it is all bosh, moonshine and "codology" to Deputy Dillon. It is time that these Deputies got down to it and studied the essentials of freedom. We have no more of a note issue in this country to-day than we had before the war, and who controls it? The Bank of England, which watches over the value of our pound to see that it is exchangeable in value with British sterling. How is that controlled? The more credit put up here, the more notes require to be issued, and, in the eyes of the British, the less value these notes are, so that credit is controlled by the Bank of England in order to keep down note issue and to make our notes of the same value as the British note.

I am not suggesting any form of credit or any form of currency; I am not suggesting the Douglas system, and there is no use pointing to Alberta, New Zealand or any other place, so far as I am concerned. My position in this matter is that we, having political freedom in this House, should have financial freedom by the establishment of a central bank operating in this city, the capital of the country, which we have not got at present. That is my position, and I have as much fixed property to go up in smoke as any other man in the House, and I am not afraid of inflation. The British pound is inflated, while ours is not, and we have to exchange a deflated pound for an inflated British pound. I challenge contradiction of that. Until we get adequate credits here, the facilities which every country has for production, we will not be able to produce. Why are 100,000 of our people unemployed? What has the Government to say to the building trade being brought to a standstill and building operatives, who would be purchasers of the extra food we are growing, and will grow more in the coming year, who would be earning good wages and be in a position to buy that food from us, walking around idle? They will not be able to live now unless we give them home assistance to buy the food from us. We are taxed to give a paltry sum to the unemployed in order that they will be able to buy more of our produce.

Consider the position in which we would be if these unemployed were working at full wages and able to come, with heads erect, into the market and buy our stuff at market prices. They would be able to pay us a better price for it and we would not have to pay in taxation for what is keeping them in idleness. It is all due to want of foresight because our Government, when they saw the danger ahead, did not import into this country the building materials which we lack here. The same applies to other walks of industrial life. Our unemployed will be a burden on us instead of being a marketable asset. Why have we that position? We had idleness before the war began and we had all the raw materials for building, including the operatives, before the outbreak of war. All we wanted was the finance to pay the men to assemble these materials and to produce houses. We had all the essentials but we had not got that money. There are men in the House who shout: "Inflation" and "Mad finance", men who went out to fight for freedom, and when they have it, they do not recognise it, and do not use it.

It is astonishing that the Minister should laugh at that. I wonder for what reason we fought for freedom, and what is freedom. Is freedom some state or condition to enable another fellow to exploit you? I wonder if the Minister for Agriculture and I were competing side by side in, say, the growing of early potatoes for a restricted market, whether he would be satisfied to give me control of his banking account.

I would.

If I had control of it, what would I do? I would see that he would not get credit to buy early seed and I would be in the market before him.

You would not do that. I would give you control of it all right, because you know more about it than I do.

I might owe more to the bank than the Minister.

I say that you know more.

I am volunteering the position that I might owe more.

Do not be too sure..

You learn banking very quickly if you owe the banks much.

He would never be attacking them if that was the position.

If the Minister considers that I, in my ignorance, know more about banking than he does, it is time he started to study, because I do not know much about it, and if this great debate comes off, I suggest that the Minister should take the chair at it.

I will take notes.

And they will not be inflated notes.

I hope the notes will be helpful to him. The Minister proposes to work farms which he takes over under this scheme, but that he will not be liable for rates or annuities while working them. Does he think that fair or equitable? If you put a man out of his land for the time being because he will not work it, perhaps through lack of funds, surely, when the Minister goes into it, or puts a man into it, he should at least see to it that he would pay the outgoings on that farm. He will not do so, and all this is to be piled on to the man from whom the land is temporarily expropriated. Again, I want to urge him to consider the very hard lot of a widow left with a farm and a young family. I am sure that if the Minister found that that widow was not tilling the land, he would not like to put in a man who would be more or less of the character of the old emergency man and say to him: "Till this land, one-sixth of it. Let it pay you or not, and you are not liable for annuities or rates," but all the time rates and annuities will be piling up for the widow who is displaced. Does the Minister think that just? I suggest that where a widow finds herself in such a condition—and the same applies to orphans—she should be allowed to make an application to the Minister, and that if the case is proved to his satisfaction, or to the satisfaction of his representative, power be vested in the Minister to waive the compulsory conditions in her case. I should like to know from the Minister whether he would consider that point.

I do not think it could be considered now.

Do you not appreciate the hardship of it? The Minister might consider it over the festive season of Christmas and perhaps he would be softened before February comes around. This motion was put down by Deputy Cogan and myself in order to have the discussion which has taken place on it. Neither of us is opposed to tillage. It was put down merely in order to have a review of the Tillage Order and its conditions, to offer suggestions and criticism and generally to be helpful. The Minister appreciated, and admitted his appreciation of, the spirit in which the debate was carried on by those who spoke before him. I think I am expressing the opinion of those with whom I had an opportunity of speaking since the Minister took part in the debate when I say that the Minister has reciprocated that spirit and I hope that we will have the co-operation necessary in this emergency in agriculture as well as in every other Department.

Would the Minister consider the question of the rape crop?

The question of the rape crop was raised at the last meeting of the agricultural consultative council and I undertook to consider the rape crop where the seed was not sown on lea land, because it was sown there for the purposes of evading the order. Where it is sown for a tillage crop, I undertook to consider it, but I wound up my statement at that meeting by saying that I was very doubtful whether there would be any rape seed at all available this year.

I take it the Minister is not really averse from the growing of rape for the purpose of manure?

If it is a genuine crop.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until Wednesday, 5th February, 1941.
Barr
Roinn