Committee on Finance. - Vote 30—Agriculture (Resumed). – Dáil Éireann (10th Dáil) – Thursday, 16 Apr 1942

Committee on Finance. - Vote 30—Agriculture (Resumed).

Mr. Murphy

When progress was reported last night I was referring to the extraordinarily rapid decline in the industry of pig rearing; perhaps I should have said the almost total extinction of that industry in certain parts of the country. That is a very serious and very alarming position for a very large number of people. I anticipate that an answer will be given to that relating the decline and the almost complete wiping out of the industry in certain places to the question of supplies of feeding stuffs. But I think that the decline in the pig-rearing industry goes back further than the beginning of any difficulties regarding supplies. Certainly, many people in a position to speak with considerable authority on this question attribute it to a succession of bunglings from which the Minister is not entirely disassociated. It seems to me that the organisation responsible, which was set up by the Minister to deal with this business, has not justified itself. Very many people, when that organisation was set up, foreshadowed very definitely what is happening at the present time. I want to hear from the Minister before this discussion concludes what are the prospects for the industry. If the Minister has nothing better to offer to us than the statement he made yesterday evening, that we need not anticipate very much worse happening in this connection in the coming year, he is offering very cold comfort indeed to the very large number of people who are dependent on the industry in this country. I come from an area where pig-rearing is a very important industry for the people as the Minister knows. Pig-rearing has been a very important part of the agricultural work of the community in West Cork. It is work that is shared in by the people living in labourers' cottages and by very many other people who supplemented their rather meagre incomes to a satisfactory extent by earnings from this industry in the past.

What I have said about pig-rearing is equally true of poultry-raising. While I observe from the summary given in the newspapers this morning of the Minister's speech yesterday that the poultry industry had a good year, the outstanding fact is that there has been a steady decline in the number of poultry in the country running, I think, to 2,000,000. Again, it is not enough to say that it is altogether a question of supplies, because long ago we should have had some indication of a policy to deal with a position of this kind, to retain for this country an industry that with pig-rearing was probably the most important means by which people in the rural areas could supplement their incomes or counterbalance a loss of income from other sources.

Has the Minister no policy for dealing with that considerable section of the farming community who have hardly any resources and very little credit at the present time? There are in very many parts of the country, as the reports of the county councils in regard to uncollectable and uncollected rates can show, a large number of people in that position. I am not going to say that all people in that position are deserving of help from the State, or are suitable objects for assistance by the State, but I do say that there are very large numbers of people at the present time, when a national campaign for the production of food has been very properly launched and very widely advocated, who are not able to get on their feet to play an effective part in that campaign. I say it is the Minister's duty to do more in the way of helping such people than we have any evidence he has been prepared to do up to the present time. What has been done in the way of helping people to effect minor improvements on their farms and in their farm buildings is all to the good but it has been done in a very limited way. It cannot affect unemployment to any considerable extent and it cannot in the end do the kind of work that is very necessary at the present time. There should be some indication somewhere of a desire, at a time when agricultural production is of such importance, when it is a matter of life and death for the people of the country, to give effect to a system of assistance and a system of agricultural development that must go hand in hand with any hope for getting the best results from agricultural production in this country.

I believe the Minister has failed very considerably in his task. During the last 12 months, when his office assumed a position of tremendous importance for this country, there was indecision and delay in connection with the fixing of a price for wheat. The price offered for wheat to the farmers of this country was 45/-, when the price of imported wheat was 84/-. Then, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, in defiance and contradiction of every statement that had been made up to a short time before, a complete change of front was effected, and a price of 50/- fixed at a time when it was obvious that a gesture of that kind, if made at an earlier date, would have brought about very much better results. I do not want to discuss the inadvisability of using the censorship for the purpose of bottling up the agitation by the farmers to get a proper price for wheat. I think the less we say about matters of that kind now the better, but certainly the Minister should profit by the lesson he has now received. If it helps him to a fuller realisation of what the people of the country need and are thinking of, then it will not have entirely lost its value.

I say that the Minister is to a large extent responsible for the system of mass emigration that is taking place from the rural parts of the country. The Minister has no policy for dealing with the people on the land, no policy for assisting them or helping them, and we are unfortunately in the position of allowing temporary employment in war industries in a neighbouring country for the moment to solve our unemployment problem. I believe we are storing up a great deal of trouble for ourselves in adopting that Micawber-like policy, in permitting that policy of drift. Anyone here who faces the facts must shudder at the thought of what is going to happen in this country when these people have to return, if there is no change in this country, or if there is no evidence of a Ministerial outlook that is more in conformity with the needs of the people than we have at the present time.

I do not think there is anything further I need say. There are very many other aspects of this question and very many other inactivities attributable to the Minister's Department that can be dealt with at a later stage, but I think the Minister has made no case for getting the amount of money earmarked for this Estimate on the statement that he made to the House yesterday evening. In the absence of some elaboration of that statement, of some more hope than that statement contains, of some more evidence of activity in regard to the agricultural industry during the coming year than we have had in the past, I submit that this Vote should be referred back for reconsideration.

Mr. Hughes

This is the most important Vote the House has to consider, but Deputies got extremely short notice as to the Government's intention to take this Vote the first day the House assembled after the Easter recess. I think it shows very scant courtesy for Deputies, and they have no grounds for feeling satisfied as to the manner in which they have been treated. At the present time the whole nation, even those people who are in the habit of looking down upon, and treating with contempt, the agricultural community are looking anxiously to that community to produce sufficient food to meet the requirements of man and beast from now until the end of the war.

It may appear to some that the Minister charged with the responsibility of harnessing the people to that important and vital work is confronted with a very formidable task, but when one examines the problem in the aggregate it should not present any insuperable difficulty, assuming that our resources are effectively and efficiently organised. On this question of providing a highly efficient organisation to ensure that our resources are fully tapped and developed during this period of emergency, when we have to rely almost 100 per cent. on our own resources, I have no hesitation in saying that, in my opinion, the Minister has lamentably failed to provide that organised effort which is so essential if we are to achieve satisfactory results. Our biggest concern in that respect at the moment is the production of essential cereals to substitute for the normal importation of wheat, maize, and other feeding stuffs. Looking back over the results of the past two years, and comparing those results with what has been achieved in the neighbouring country and in Northern Ireland, one is forced to the conclusion that the results which we anticipated here were not achieved. We fell considerably behind the results that were anticipated, while our neighbours succeeded. At the present time I am asking myself whether that is going to be repeated in the coming year. As I said, to my mind this is a problem which should not present any insuperable difficulty. We have a population of less than 3,000,000, living in a country where there are 12,000,000 acres of arable land, some of which ranks amongst the finest arable land in the world, and it will not redound to the credit of our generation if we fail to produce the essential food for that small population during this period of crisis. No one can question the ability and capacity of our people to do that. If we fail, we will fail not because of the incapacity of our people to do the job, but because our people have not been efficiently and effectively organised to do it.

When we compare our methods with the vast organisation built up in England and Northern Ireland to effect the maximum production of food there, we can readily understand why we have not achieved satisfactory results. Only within the last month the British Minister of Agriculture was in a position to boast of the wonderful achievement there. They have now under cultivation in England 6,000,000 acres of land over and above what was under cultivation prewar. It was pointed out by the British Minister that, in his opinion, they have now under cultivation the maximum amount of land that it is possible to have under cultivation there, and that in future years if more food is to be produced it can only be produced by more efficient methods of agriculture. In achieving those results they had set up organisations in each county, known as war agricultural committees. Those committees are comprised of practical farmers in each county. They dealt with every difficulty and every aspect appertaining to the production of food, including credit, equipment, seeds, and all the other details to which it was necessary to give close attention if successful results were to be hoped for. Our efforts were altogether on a different scale. The Taoiseach went down to Ennis and said that they had warned the people of the danger, and the Government could not be blamed. Does the Taoiseach really think that his responsibility as head of the Government ended when the people were warned that we must produce a certain amount of food in this country, or else go hungry? The Taoiseach and the Minister must realise that if we are to get efficient food production, and if we are to expect the people to cultivate 25 per cent. of their land, some of them who never cultivated to any extent before, they will require a good deal of assistance. Many of them have no equipment whatever, and, no matter how willing they are or what capital they have, they find it impossible to purchase the necessary equipment. Yet, no effort was made by the Minister to provide that equipment.

In reply to a Parliamentary question of mine recently the Minister informed me that the incidence of default was not any greater in the non-tillage districts than in the tillage districts. I am very much inclined to question that. In fact, my own experience does not bear that out at all, because I have got some letters from farmers in the non-tillage areas of my own constituency in North Kildare complaining of the fact that no matter how willing they are to do their necessary quota of tillage they find it impossible to get the equipment for the job. Yet, the attitude of the Department is simply to send down an official who has no sympathy, good, bad or indifferent, with the problems confronting those people. If they are not prepared to do the job by some means or other, that is a matter for themselves; they are brought into court and severely fined. That is not the way to tackle a big problem like this. That is not the way to get results. That is why we have failed during the last two years, and that is why I am afraid we will fail again this year—because there is no organisation whatever to deal with the problem. The Minister, in his statement, gave us very little information on that score. It is a matter that is agitating the minds of many people who appreciate the problem of food production, and who appreciate the dreadful position that our people will be in next year if we fail this year.

The Minister evidently has no practical body or organisation to advise him in that respect. He is relying absolutely on the officials of his Department, many of whom are cloistered in Merrion Street, and are not conversant with practical life in rural Ireland, or with the problems and handicaps that our agricultural community have to face at the present time if we are to get the production that is necessary. We have, under sub-head M (8), an item of £150. which shows a reduction of £50 since last year, for an Agricultural Production Consultative Council. I want to ask the Minister what purpose that Agricultural Consultative Council serves? When has it met? How many times has it met? Is it meeting constantly at the present time, when it is so essential that the Minister should tap all sources of information concerning the problems of production? I think this particular council is a sham, and nothing else. It ought to be a really live, effective and useful body, or else it ought to be cleared out of the Book of Estimates altogether. It does not appear to me to be a useful body. As the amount this year has been reduced by £50, I interpret that as meaning that the Minister intends to summon that body less even than he did last year, and last year I do not believe it met more than three or four times. On the question of equipment, I do not want to put labour into the category of equipment, but Deputy Murphy did refer to the labour problem, and to the fact that labour is leaving the country because conditions are more attractive on the other side. It is a very big problem. I know that many skilled workers—tractor drivers and men skilled in the operation of all tractor machinery and implements—have left the country. I have letters from big farmers who say, in one case, that they have lost two and, in another case, three tractor drivers and who are alarmed about the situation in which men in a constant job, and in what appeared to me to be a good job, found a way of getting around any obstacles there are to prevent men who are employed from leaving the country. We have heard a good deal about the necessity of avoiding waste, and we all recognise that there is a very great necessity for the taking of every precaution to ensure that wastage does not occur. One source of wastage, to my mind, is to be found in the threshing mills. There are many threshing mills in the country, and although the cost of threshing operations at present is very high, many of these mills are in very poor condition, and it would be very useful if, between now and harvest time, the Minister had an inspection made of these mills to ensure that they are in a condition to operate efficiently and will not leave a considerable amount of grain in the straw to be lost.

There is also the point I raised last night that rabbits have not been purchased for the last three weeks. There, again, is a very considerable source of loss. I am sure the Minister appreciates the enormous damage done, particularly in tillage districts, by vermin of that sort. Some sort of appeal might be made to the agricultural community to kill vermin around the farmyard because much destruction is done to grain in the stack and in the barn by vermin such as rats and mice. The Minister gave us a good deal of information about kerosene for tractors, and he told the House that he got fewer complaints this year than last year as to the distribution of kerosene. I think that is quite correct. My experience is that the distribution is more efficient this year and that Deputies are getting fewer complaints, and that is all to the good.

On the question of binder twine, this is a matter of very grave concern to the agricultural community. Fortunately it appears that we have enough twine for the coming harvest, but if present conditions continue until next harvest 12 months, we shall be in a very bad position, so far as we can see. Our present supplies will be exhausted in the coming harvest. An effort is being made to get a certain acreage of flax grown in County Carlow for the purpose of producing fibre for binder twine, but that will produce only a very small percentage of the amount required. I do not expect that more than 450 to 500 acres of flax will be grown and that will produce approximately 200 tons of fibre which is a very small quantity, in view of the fact that 2,000 tons of twine are required for harvesting operations. The Government, I think, showed a lack of vision and foresight in this respect. I am aware that 1,000 tons of twine could have been secured after last harvest. It was a question of securing shipping space and no shipping space would be granted for the shipping of that twine which could have been secured in America from the International Harvester Company. Later, when shipping space could be secured, the twine could not be obtained. When the Japanese took over the East Indies, the source of the supply of raw material was cut away. Sisal comes from the East Indies and our friends on the other side of the Atlantic were reluctant to release any quantity of twine in face of that situation.

I suggest to the Minister who is responsible for the production of food that any shipping space available should be earmarked, firstly, for essential food and then for any raw material necessary for food production. This is a very essential raw material for the production of food. It might be suggested that we could harvest without binder twine, but any practical farmer must admit that under present conditions and in view of the fact that numbers of young men have gone from rural Ireland, harvesting without modern machinery is an impossibility. We certainly would not get the grain tied by hand, and if we were to cut it down like a hay crop and rake it, it would mean an enormous loss in grain. Although it does mean looking forward a year and a half, it is a matter that deserves very special attention, and whatever chance there is of securing any raw material ought to be availed of. I do not want to stress the point unduly—it may be a matter for the Department of Supplies—but the Minister did refer to binder twine and it ought to be his concern. He ought to keep continually impressing on the Department of Supplies that if any odd lots of raw material for binder twine, or even manufactured twine, are available between now and next harvest 12 months, they ought to be secured.

I do not know whether the Minister is aware of the fact, but I should like to inform him that after last harvest it was possible to secure a shipment of binders. Binders to the number of 400 could have been got from the International Harvester Company, but it was not then possible to secure shipping space. It might appear to some people that a large amount of shipping space would be required for 400 binders, but these binders are shipped in cases and assembled here, and for that reason the amount of space required would not be very great. Those 400 binders were afterwards reduced to 100, but shipping space could not be provided and when there was an offer of shipping space later, it was not possible to secure the binders. Such a situation appears to me to indicate lack of foresight on the part of any Minister who let such an opportunity slip because we certainly cannot save a harvest here without the necessary machinery and equipment and where an opportunity like that presented itself, it should have been availed of, no matter how inconvenient it might have been in other ways.

I understand that no spare parts for binders have arrived this year as yet, and that whatever spares we have are spares which were left over from last year. That is a very serious situation, because if a machine breaks down for want of a cog-wheel, or because of a broken needle, it will lead to a very serious position for the country. A considerable amount of spare parts is used each year. These, certainly, will not involve a lot of shipping space, and some effort ought to be made immediately to secure these essential spare-parts for the coming harvest.

Deputy Murphy referred to the guaranteed price of 50/-. It is to be regretted that the 50/- was not announced earlier. The Minister argued that the 41/- and the 45/- more than met the increase in the cost of production at the time. I do not think that the Minister would even attempt to justify that contention, because when one compares the price of implements and manures, or the absence of manures—the percentage increase in those, commodities—with the price of farm produce, then one can appreciate the very substantial increase in the cost of production.

I suggest that there is a necessity for having some sort of costing machinery in operation in the Department. There is a lot of talk about the decay of agriculture, and about people flying from the land. I believe a costing section would give valuable information in connection with the agricultural industry. It is very easy for the Minister to say that, having regard to the cost of other commodities, the 41/- and the 45/- were reasonable prices in the circumstances. That does not satisfy me, nor does it satisfy many other people who have a practical experience of agricultural production. There should be a costing section which could indicate whether certain charges put on agriculture through local government and other channels can be borne by the agricultural community.

The present system of taking a census of production is most unsatisfactory. When last year the figure of 491,000 acres was given as the area of land under wheat, many farmer Deputies questioned it, and we were scoffed at by the Minister for Supplies, who felt certain that the figure was accurate. As regards the figure set out in the Irish Trade Journal, 460,000 acres, I am very much inclined to question its accuracy. The system of taking the census is wrong. A Gárda inquires from one farmer what the position is in regard to half a dozen adjoining farmers. If we are to place any reliance on figures collected in that way, we must have more accurate information. I suggest that the Gárda should take an ordnance sheet on his rounds and ask farmers to point out what fields they have under cultivation and what type of grain or root crop has been sown. The Gárda could then ascertain from the ordnance sheet the actual acreage sown and there would be no difficulty in having a check up, because the Gárda could walk around the place and see if the farmer's information was borne out by the actual amount of tillage on the farm. The method of taking a census of production last year did not give any definite information and some effort should be made to secure more accurate information.

If the Government's intention to guarantee 50/- had been announced earlier it would have meant a very considerable increase in the acreage under wheat. There was less winter wheat sown this year than last year. A good deal of land remained untouched until late in the year, and during the last month we had very wet weather, which left the land unfit for cultivation—heavy retentive land which is very wet even still. Many farmers may be obliged to put in some other cereals where they might have put in wheat.

It is only right to point out that the agricultural community value the fertility of the land and they have a conservative policy with regard to that fertility. They are reluctant to draw on that fertility unless in a time of grave emergency and when it is definitely in the national interest, because it is a great capital asset. Individual farmers wish to preserve the fertility of their land and hand it down to their posterity in good shape, and if they are obliged to use it to the extent now demanded, then they are entitled to receive fair compensation. That is the most effective answer that can be made to any criticism in regard to the farmers' demands at the present time.

If certain sections of the community are asked to draw on their most valuable assets, they are entitled to fair compensation for so doing. It is only fair that the farmers should be assured a guaranteed price for at least four years. That would encourage them to adopt a definite system of rotation over that period. It would give them an opportunity of putting in some root crop and dressing the land with farmyard manure, thus restoring its fertility to some extent. If they were assured of that type of guarantee, it would be an inducement to people who would otherwise be reluctant to break up valuable grass land that is capable of producing excellent stock. As well as that there should be an assurance that it is the intention of the Government to help farmers to restore the fertility of the soil, which unquestionably will be impaired during this emergency.

In this matter of food production the greatest handicap is the lack of artificial manures. Unfortunately, at the commencement of the war, the attitude of the Government was represented by leaving on the tariff on imported artificial manures. As has happened with many other essential commodities, the tariff was lifted when it was too late, when it was not possible to secure supplies. The only manure the farmers have to rely on is a new compound manure composed of 20 per cent. of phosphates, 1 per cent. of nitrogen and 1 per cent. of potash. It is a manure of very doubtful solubility and the price is £10. I am very doubtful whether it is value for anything like that price, even under present conditions, or whether a farmer, in fact, would get a return to the amount of £10 by the application of a manure of that very low grade. Then, we find, under sub-head G (3), that last year we had artificial manures subsidised to the amount of £52,880, whereas this year there is merely a token Vote of £5. I suggest to the Minister that it is very poor encouragement to farmers to take the subsidy on artificial manures away from them this year when the artificial manure does not appear to be worth the money. I think it is a wrong attitude.

The Minister, in reply to a Parliamentary question of mine on this matter, suggested that there was no necessity to pay a subsidy because the manure would be bought in any case. I think that is a very unfair attitude for the Minister to take up on this matter of a subsidy for artificial manures. The Minister must appreciate the enormous handicap this problem of artificial manures must be on our agricultural community, and when we compare our situation in connection with artificial manures with what obtains in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the difficulty becomes even more apparent. The real difficulty from lack of artificial manures obtains in the tillage districts more than in the non-tillage or new tillage districts, because where old grass lands are broken up you have a big reserve of plant food; you have a good deal of humus and there is a good deal of vegetable matter in old grass lands that we can draw on for two or three years. But in the tillage districts, where the fertility is low as a result of intensive tillage, the lack of artificial manures is a very serious matter. The Minister is showing no sympathy whatever to the people in those tillage districts in withdrawing the subsidy.

Again, I take this opportunity of raising the question of supplies of sulphate of ammonia. The Minister has assured us that representations have been made to the British Government about releasing supplies of sulphate of ammonia, but so far those representations have proved a failure. If, in fact, we could get supplies of sulphate of ammonia, it would go a long way to relieve the position, because we have in our soil some reserves of phosphates and potash, but what we lack, and what we really need, is nitrogenous manure. On that question the one thing that strikes me is that every other form of artificial manure for the coming year is to be rationed in England and Northern Ireland. Sulphate of ammonia, however, is uncontrolled because they have ample supplies of it to meet their own requirements—it is a synthetic product, manufactured by the Imperial Chemicals Company—and I am not satisfied that sufficient efforts have been made by our Ministry to secure at least some supplies of sulphate of ammonia. I refer to this matter again because I feel that it is absolutely essential in certain districts if we are to continue production or to make any effort to keep up the yield of the crops. There is going to be a steep fall in yield, particularly in old tillage districts, if we have to carry on without some supply of nitrogenous manure.

We have an increase in the subsidy for lime this year, and I think that is very useful. Deputy Murphy, referring to the use of lime, spoke of it as a fertiliser. I think it is very unwise to refer to it as a fertiliser. It is not a fertiliser, and it would be very unwise to encourage the indiscriminate use of lime. It cannot be used on every type of soil, and its application to an alkaline soil might produce a barren soil for two or three years. Therefore, I think it is very dangerous to refer to it as a fertiliser, and no farmer, unless he is perfectly satisfied that the soil is sour and that it is necessary to apply it to his land, should do so. In fact, he ought not to use lime without an analysis of the soil so as to be sure that there is a lack of lime or alkali in the soil, because it is only on such land that lime can be used effectively or with good results.

Now, I asked the Minister a Parliamentary question to-day about the discrepancy between the price of our fat cattle and the price of British fat cattle. He differed with me about the price of English fat cattle, but I am sure he is aware of the fact that since the 2nd March last a subsidy has been paid to British farmers on fat cattle which would average out at the rate of 6/6 per head over the next 12 months. That subsidy is given to offset the increase in agricultural wages in Great Britain, and on the average it would amount to 6/6 per cwt. Now. the price of fat cattle in England, killing out at 58 per cent., and over, was 76/- per cwt. for the week of April 13. The Minister insists that the price is 70/-, but I am taking that figure from the Farmers' Weekly of April 2nd, 1942, and I have no reason whatever to doubt the accuracy of that information. Accordingly, taking the percentage of 58 per cent., at which many of our cattle would kill out, and taking the present price as arranged to be about 57/- per cwt., while the British price is 76/-, or a difference of 19/- per cwt. for top grade; and taking the 5/- of a reduction in the price of cattle of Irish origin that are two months in England, there is a difference of 14/- per cwt.

In my opinion, some effort should be made to bring our prices into closer alignment with British prices, because if that is not done it is bound to have the effect of forcing all our cattle to be shipped as stores, and that will operate very much against stall-feeding next year. In the grass districts it will mean that cattle will have to be taken off earlier. It may be suggested that it is in our interest to get rid of our cattle earlier, but, taking the long view, I think it is not in the best interests of the country that we should not get an opportunity of finishing some of our cattle here. It undoubtedly takes more from the land to produce young cattle—the bone, muscle and hair and skin—than to finish the cattle. Any rich land that we have here has been made rich because, over a long period of years, it has been only asked to finish cattle, to produce the fat, and that takes less out of the land than merely to produce cattle in the growing stage. Besides that, if we are to have a tillage policy we must encourage winter feeding. This price is certainly bound to operate against winter feeding, of fat stock, as you could not produce fat stock under those price conditions.

In dealing with the question of cattle, I would like to say one word about breeding. Our policy in recent years has been, unfortunately, to use too many black bulls and, while the first cross of Aberdeen Angus produced good results, some of our people are beginning to cross more than once, with very bad results, to my mind. If we are to produce sound basic stock, the shorthorn cannot be beaten. Realising, too, that the people to whom we export our surplus cattle look to this country particularly for young stock to produce their herds of cows, it is very essential that we should stick as far as possible to the shorthorn to produce that type of heifer of good colour, good head and good quality that eventually makes the ideal cow. Therefore, in my opinion, with the exception of poor and mountainous districts—where it may be useful, as some people appear to think that the Aberdeen Angus is a hardier type, though I am inclined to question that, too—it would be a sounder policy for us to stick to the shorthorn and not go in so much for the Aberdeen Angus.

The information the Minister gave the House yesterday about pigs and butter was given in a very complacent manner, and he did not appear to be worried about the situation in the least. He did not advert to any policy with regard to the preservation of those two branches of agriculture so vital and so essential. The Minister informed us there was no export of bacon since 30th September last and that we are drawing on the bacon that was put into cold store over the winter period.

Mr. Dillon

That is not true. Bacon was exported since 30th September.

Mr. Hughes

I am just stating what the Minister said. As a matter of fact, on that question of export, the Minister informed us there was no butter exported over the winter and I had two sources of information to-day to disprove that. I am told that there is some butter being loaded at the Custom House this day for export. Deputy Davin was there and says he saw butter being loaded.

Mr. Dillon

It is a great scandal if there is, as there is no butter in the West of Ireland.

Mr. Hughes

Deputy Ryan was also there and informed me that there was butter going on to the boat. That is a very serious matter, in face of the actual shortage of butter, as Deputy Dillon says, in the West of Ireland, and not only there but all over the country. Butter cannot be got anywhere at present and in the City of Dublin the same position arises.

On the question of pigs, I think the announcement made by the Minister a few weeks ago of a reduction of 6/- a cwt. was disastrous. If we want to preserve the pig industry and ensure that we will have enough bacon for our own requirements inside the next few months, a further reduction in the price of bacon is disastrous. In a few months we will have to face the position where there will not be enough bacon to meet our requirements. Our consumption of bacon has gone down considerably in recent years—gone down by about 25 per cent. I have figures here showing the number of pigs received at bacon factories for curing, as follows: week ended 7th March, 1942, 9,260; the corresponding week last year, 19,486; corresponding week, 1940, 25,785. That shows a reduction in the week's killings from 25,000 to 9,000 pigs in two years. When we remember that, ten years ago, in 1931, this country exported 684,000 cwts. of bacon and approximately 500,000 live pigs, that this year we have exported no bacon since 30th September last and that in the coming year we are not likely to export any bacon at all, one becomes very much alarmed about the position of this very valuable industry.

Turning to the butter industry, the Minister informed us that 100,000 cwts. of butter was exported last year, and yet he said that we could have consumed 20,000 cwts. more if it were available. Looking back over the exports of butter for a period of years, we find they were as follows: in 1934, 507,912 cwts.; in 1935, 530,978 cwts.; in 1936, 518,152 cwts.; in 1937, 379,925 cwts.; in 1938, 377,467 cwts.; in 1939, 190,873 cwts. and last year 100,000 cwts. That shows there is a decline in the dairying industry over a period of years. Our production shows that decline. The Minister may suggest that there was more butter consumed at home. Our production was as follows: in 1936, 837,879 cwts.; in 1937, 758,419 cwts.; in 1938, 766,460 cwts.; in 1939, 718,279 cwts.; in 1940, 657,956 cwts.; in 1941, 633,203 cwts. The Minister pointed out that 1940 was a particularly bad year—a dry year. Last year was very favourable, but the production was not any greater.

There is another consideration which he seemed to overlook about last year —the fact that, owing to the foot-and-mouth disease, there was no export of cows. There were many cows milking here last year which normally might have been exported, and that had the effect of keeping up our production. I feel there will be a steep decline in butter production this year. There is a very attractive price for cows, and 6d. or 6½d. for milk is not by any means an attractive price, in any circumstances whatever, so the tendency will be to sell many cows.

I feel that there will be a very steep fall in butter production this year. The Minister has informed the House that we may not export any butter this year. It is quite possible that we will produce sufficient for our own requirements but even that is questionable. I have no hesitation in saying that, if the decline in dairying continues, we will not be able to supply our requirements in butter the following year. Here we have two very valuable branches of the agricultural industry in a decaying condition and the Minister complacently comes in and informs the House of the fact without any suggestion as to what he proposes to do to rehabilitate the industries. He does not inform us whether or not he proposes to set up a commission to inquire into the problems that beset and confront the dairying industry. If the dairying industry goes, it will be a very severe loss to Irish agriculture, not only in respect of the production of butter but as a source for stocking-many counties that are not dairying counties. All these cows leave calves. Those calves are bred from the best of our stock in the southern counties. If, through economic necessity, farmers in the southern counties are forced out of dairying and switched over to some other system of agriculture, it will be an irreparable loss. I suggest that some thing should be done immediately to see what is wrong—whether the cost of production can be reduced or the milking capacity of our cows increased or winter production improved. Our production of butter is, unfortunately, only seasonal. That is why we have been beaten by countries which were our competitors on the British market before the war. These matters require urgent examination.

It seems extraordinary that the Minister should allow these two valuable industries to slip through his fingers. He looks on without worrying. I suppose he feels that the substitution of this policy of self-sufficiency, producing enough for our own requirements, will meet the case. Very few people will agree with him in that respect. The present emergency has clearly shown the fallacy of self-sufficiency. It has shown that we have to import many essential things and that, to obtain these, we have to export. Here are two valuable commodities which we have been profitably exporting. Will the Minister let these industries slip through his fingers without making any attempt to save them?

Under sub-head E (2), which deals with veterinary research, the small sum of £4,490 is being voted. As the Minister is aware, one of our biggest problems in dairying is concerned with mastitis, abortion and sterility, which we have so often discussed in this House. The spending of the miserable sum of £4,490 on veterinary research will never get us anywhere, so far as an effective cure for these diseases is concerned. A much greater sum should be devoted to this all-important work. I think, too, that there should appear in the Book of Estimates Votes for research in other directions as well. We should have a soil-research department. We have a variety of soils and much more could be done with them if we had more information. We have no information whatever about the condition of our soil. We are dependent, to a large extent, on the results of experiments carried out at Rockhampstead. There are many problems which peculiarly affect our soil and we can deal with these efficiently only by having a research department of our own. Substantial sums devoted to that purpose would be well spent in the national interest.

At this period we should be thinking of what is going to happen us when the war is over. There should be some effort at post-war planning. A planning authority should be set up now to deal with that matter. Our neighbours— the British—are talking a lot about the problems which will beset the agricultural community, and the community generally, there after the war. They think it unlikely that they will retain their world commerce to the same extent as in the past. They think that they will, probably, be forced to rely more on their own productive resources. Nationalisation of the land, they think, is essential, in so far as it will become the property of the tenant and the landlord will disappear, as he has done in this country. Agriculture will have to become more efficient. The margin of profit will be small and you can only counteract that smaller margin of profit by greater efficiency, resulting in greater production. How that can be brought about is a problem we shall have to face, as well as our neighbours. On that question, I was interested recently in what the Minister for Local Government said at a meeting of the Literary and Historical Society at University College, Dublin. The Minister was invited to speak there. I think that it was an unfortunate choice. The Minister spoke on a matter on which very few people would recognise him as an authority.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Minister for Local Government is not responsible for this Vote.

Mr. Hughes

I was just going to ask whether he was voicing the views of the Government and stating their policy in what he said at University College.

An Ceann Comhairle

Each Estimate is introduced by the Minister responsible for the Department concerned. Only that Minister's policy and administration are in question in discussing Estimates.

Mr. Hughes

I suggest that we should set up some sort of authority for post-war planning, to anticipate what will happen when the war is over and to have some preparation made so that the agricultural community will be able to face the difficulties that will, undoubtedly, beset them in that difficult period.

Mr. Dillon

An agricultural policy that leaves this country, in the month of April, 1942, without pigs, without butter, without oats, without barley and with insufficient wheat, is, certainly, a great agricultural policy. Would anyone in Europe have believed that there was a living creature in shoe leather who could have done to the 12,000,000 acres of arable land in Ireland what Dr. James Ryan has succeeded in doing? Who would have believed that we would live to see the day when the people of Ireland would go hungry for bacon, when the people of Ireland would not have butter to put on their bread and when the people of Ireland would not have a pot of stirabout to take off the fire? Did Oliver Cromwell, at the darkest hour of his most ravishing persecution in Ireland, achieve that? He was not able, and it was not for want of trying. But Dr. Ryan has done in ten years as Minister for Agriculture, what Oliver Cromwell and all his minions could not do during their many years of lordship. The astonishing part of it is that the Minister does not come in here with his head bowed. He does not hide from his colleagues in his Party who are supposed to represent the farmers. He comes in like a nonchalant schoolboy and tells us that we have no oats, barley, pigs or butter, but that he is not to blame. Who is to blame if it is not the Fianna Fáil Minister for Agriculture and his colleagues? Why have we no oatmeal stirabout to-day? Why is it that the people of rural Ireland cannot get a pot of stirabout or a loaf of bread? Was there any period of the great European war or was there any period of the seven centuries of British occupation of this country when that was true? What happened in the past ten years that produced a situation in Ireland that did not obtain during 700 years of British occupation? I do not think that the cause was malignant. I think that it was just sheer stupidity. That would not worry me very seriously if I did not realise that, with the full evidence of this gargantuan stupidity before them, the Irish people have elected the Minister again and again. That is a very serious situation.

The Irish people own the land of this country and they can do what they like with it. They seem to have chosen a body of men to run the country who are rendering the land of Ireland sterile and incapable of supporting the wretchedly diminishing population which we at present have. Never during 700 years of British occupation were we short of stirabout and, at that time, we had a population of from 5,000,000 to 12,000,000. To-day, the population is not 4,000,000 and we cannot provide them with food. That fact is known to every Deputy in this House. Will any Deputy, of the Fianna Fáil Party get up and explain it? Will any Deputy of the Fianna Fáil Party tell us why it is that, ten years ago, 500,000 acres of our land was capable of producing 5,000,000 barrels of wheat and that this year that acreage of land will produce only half that quantity? Why is it that 400,000 acres of Irish land will produce only 2,000,000 barrels of wheat whereas, ten years ago, the same acreage of land would have produced twice as much? Will any Fianna Fáil Deputy get up and tell me if it was common sense to spend the accumulated fertility of the soil in growing wheat for consumption here when wheat could be bought in the markets of the world at a price lower than that ever obtained for wheat since Cleopatra sat upon the throne of Egypt, thus exhausting our land and leaving us now, at a time when we cannot get imported wheat, unable to extract from the land of our own country a sufficiency of wheat to feed our people? Was that sane? Is there any Deputy in Dáil Eireann who will get up and justify that codology?

The Minister says to us to-day: "Go out and get the farmer who never sowed wheat to sow it now," thus showing that he knows as well as I do that the average intelligent farmer, though not in the habit of growing wheat in the past, can adapt himself to that crop in an emergency, Thousands of farmers who never grew wheat before will grow it this year, because the shipping position makes it impossible to get wheat anywhere else, and the farmer who has not exhausted his land by growing wheat during the past ten years will give the community a better yield of wheat for every acre sown than some of the warriors who were lining their pockets for the past ten years out of the blood and sweat of the poor of this city. It is the men who scorned to make money out of poverty and hunger who will obtain an adequate return of wheat from their land in this year when it is a public service to do so. Fianna Fáil farmers gloried in the opportunity of sucking the blood of the poor during the firsts eight years of this administration and, in the process, they deteriorated and destroyed the land of which they were custodians. Now, when that land should be used for the advantage of the community by whose grace it is held, it cannot be used because its accumulated fertility has been converted into the ill-gotten gains of the Fianna Fáil henchmen who grabbed their gains when they saw them there. Our people are the poorer as a result.

I want to draw the Minister's attention to a special point now. The Minister allowed 50/- a barrel for wheat. A ramp is already on to raise that to 60/- next year. If they get away with that, it will be raised to 70/-. I remember warning the Minister on the first day they embarked on this wheat scheme that, before it was long in operation, they would find themselves in exactly the same position as the French found themselves in, and that the price would go up and up because there would be powerful vested interests fighting to that end and no effective combination to resist it. The ramp is now on to increase the price of wheat to 60/- a barrel. If that is successful, it will go to 70/- and 80/-, because the Fianna Fáil gang who have an interest in growing wheat are just the same type as the tariff-racketeering gang whose sole concern is not their duty or responsibility to the community but how much they can get out of it. It does not matter whether it is the people who are oppressed by a tariff or the community staggering under the burden of war, their sole concern is: "How much can we get out of it?""What do we get out of this situation to line our pockets and be damned to the community !"

Well, I have always prided myself on this: that I was primarily interested in the agricultural community in this country, but if any group of the agricultural community combine to rob the people of this country as the tariff racketeers sought to rob them, then so long as I can get 8,000 people to vote for me I will nail them and expose them in this House as I nailed and exposed the tariff racketeers who tried the same thing. There is no use in uttering warnings about impending dangers if we have not got methods to deal with them. I told the Minister for Agriculture six or nine months ago how to deal with this situation, and if he had taken my advice his dilemma at the present time would not be as grave as it is. The Minister fixed the price of 10/9 per cwt. for feeding oats. I state in this House that, while that price was still operative, his own inspectors were paying the black market price of 2/- per stone in East Donegal, so that the plain ordinary people of East Donegal had placed before them the spectacle of salaried servants of the State openly trading in the black market at black market prices. The 10/9 per cwt. fixed by this Government for oats resulted in a situation developing in this country where the bullock and the cow had oats go leor, but neither the child nor the man could get stirabout for breakfast. Now, unless Deputies understand the machinery which brought that about it sounds almost incredible. The fact is that no farmer would sell oats at 10/9. The only person who could make oatmeal for stirabout was the licensed miller. Now, the licensed miller dare not pay more than the statutory price lest his licence to mill should be taken away from him. He was constrained to go on the market seeking oats at 10/9 per cwt. for conversion into oatmeal, and could not get it. The farmer would not sell oats to the miller for 10/9 when he could bring it to the market at Ballaghaderreen and get from 23/- to 25/- per cwt. for his oats, and he got it. This oats was fed to live stock by people who had nothing else wherewith to feed their live stock. At a time when I could not get a stone of oatmeal for poor people coming into Ballaghaderreen who had nothing else to eat, I saw oats being bought and fed to the bullock and the calf because persons who desired to do that felt themselves free to go on the market and pay black market prices, more especially after they had heard that Government inspectors were doing the same thing in East Donegal before the Minister made his amending Order permitting persons to pay any price they liked for what seed oats they could come by.

I directed the attention of the House and excited the incredulity of Deputies when I told them that our Government forbade a farmer in this country to seek or accept from a brewer more than 30/- a barrel for his barley, while those same brewers were paying 170/- per barrel for the same barley in the British market where the beer from both barleys was being ultimately disposed of. It did not surprise me that Deputies came up to me afterwards and said: "You could not mean 170/- a barrel." I said to them that I did mean it. The same brewer that was authorised by our Government to buy his barley at 30/- a barrel paid in the British market 170/- a barrel for the same barley for conversion into beer to be sold in the same market. At this moment the price for malting barley for the coming season in Great Britain is being fixed at what? Bear in mind the price here is 30/-, while the fixed price in Great Britain is 70/-, for the coming season, guaranteed.

It is becoming a crime to grow barley in this country. Any man who grew barley in this country last year, if he had ten barrels of barley to the acre, was fined £70 per statute acre when he sowed it. Do Deputies realise that there was a fine imposed on him by our Government, payable to the brewer and not payable to the Exchequer or to the State, and not payable for the benefit of our community, but payable into the treasury of the brewers—a fine of £70 for every acre that he sowed? According to the present plan, if there is no alteration made in the price of malting barley, any farmer that dares to grow barley this year will pay the brewer a fine of £20 per acre for daring to sow barley on his land. Are we living in Bedlam, or do members of this House believe that the farmers of Ireland are paying the brewers a fine of £20 per acre for growing barley? Do they stand for that, because that is the present position? What astonishes me is to see Deputies get up and speak with complete equanimity, not the least disturbed by the situation but only mildly distressed with certain aspects of the Estimate, and begging the Minister to consider their representations.

My God, my attitude towards the Minister is that he ought to fly out of the country. How he has the brazen countenance to show himself before the people, to whom he professes to be responsible, is a source of astonishment to me. Just conceive in any country in the world where a Minister for Agriculture could get up and say: "I made the farmers, for whom I am a trustee, pay the brewers £1,000,000 for nothing last year, and I will make them pay the brewers £250,000 next year. I will make them do it and make them like it, and I will get the boys to follow me into the Lobby in favour of doing it." No sheep ever followed a goat into the slaughter house more mildly than will the Fianna Fáil Deputies follow the Minister. That astonishes me. Now, vile as these abuses are, no useful purpose is served in exposing and denouncing them unless you can prescribe a remedy. I wish people would realise that we are living in the midst of a world revolution of an unprecedented kind. People asperse proposals for the solution of our current difficulties as being administratively impossible or so grave a departure from established precedent as to be quite unthinkable. We are all living on the very lip of a volcano, and if the Germans win this war we will be confronted with revolu- tionary changes of a character that none of the Deputies of this House has ever dreamed of. Their whole personal domestic lives will be torn asunder. They will wake up to discover themselves slaves instead of free men. They will not be asked: "Will you co-operate in doing this or that." They will be told: "If you do not do it, you will be liquidated."

There is one way to deal with this situation. I have pointed out to this House time and time again that if we had abundant oatmeal in this country the flour shortage would be shorn of a large part of its dire consequences, so far as rural Ireland was concerned. Put ten stone of oatmeal on the chair in any country house and, though they would like to have flour, there is no hunger or starvation if they cannot get it. Put an empty bag on the chair and flour becomes an absolute necessity if the farm work from day to day is to be done. If there is oatmeal and potatoes and a bit of dripping to fry them, all the flour that comes into the house will be kept for the man and the bread made out of it will be brought to the bog. If there is bacon before the man when he comes home at night, and cabbage and potatoes to go with it, the work will be done, the family will be fed and the wherewithal to live for the whole community will be forthcoming. But stop oats and bacon and you are faced with famine.

There is only one way you are going to get oats and barley, and you might as well face it now. I think it is too late now for this year, but we will have to think of next year, the year after and the year after that. I admire Deputy Hughes's optimism—I wish I could share it—when he talks of post-war planning. We have got to kill the beast before we celebrate the obsequies. The beast that has got to be killed is a pretty formidable gentleman, and it will take a long time to bleed him. It may take three years or it may take five years to bleed the Nazis into subjection, but that has got to be done before there is any post-war planning. While that operation proceeds, those of us who are helping, indirectly or directly, in that task, have got to maintain our strength so that our grip upon the beast will not be relaxed. To maintain strength our people must have food, and there is only one way you can get that food for our people, in the shape of oats and barley. You want oats as a substitute for flour. You want barley as an adjuvant to the millers' grist if wheat should prove insufficient and as the raw material of two of our greatest export industries, beer and whiskey.

Take the control off the price of oats and barley. Let us have a free market. Let us make our own bargain with the brewers. That is all I want. Get out from between us and the brewers and we will see we get a fair price, do not worry. If they are not prepared to give it, we will find pigs prepared to eat the barley. The brewer and the pig industry can compete between them and we will sell the barley to the export industry that pays us best. That is fair. Neither the brewers nor the pigs have any special claim upon us. Both of them are good export industries. Let the best man win and let the other fellow do with the surplus. If I know the brewers, the pigs will be living on the surplus. I do not give a fiddle-dee-dee so long as the pigs raise the ante. If the farmer gets paid for his barley he will know what to do with his coin. I do not care whether it is a pig's leg or the brewer who pays it, so long as he gets it. Take the control off the price of oats. Let the man who wants food for stock go out and grow the oats if he does not want to pay for it. I hear people saying: "But if you raise the price of oats and barley you will raise the price of feeding stuffs to the feeder." Why does not the feeder go and grow the feeding stuffs if they are too dear to buy? Who ever asked him to buy them? What feeder in this country could not grow all the oats he is in a position to feed? Who wants him to buy oats if it does not pay him to do so? I am told in the next breath that only 5 per cent. of the oats grown in this country is sold to feeders, that all the rest is consumed on the farm. All I can say is that the codology that is going on at the present time has simply-resulted in oats being as dear as they would be if there was no controlled price at all, and the feeder must be making a profit even at the high price or he would not pay it.

I have seen people hungry. I have seen mothers standing in my shop crying that they could not get food, women who could get neither flour nor oatmeal and had nothing but potatoes for the children, who had to endure the misery, not only of giving the children potatoes three times a day, but of experiencing the humiliation—and that counts for something in rural Ireland —of sending children to school with three cold potatoes in their handkerchief. We here, middle-aged men, if we had to go out in public and eat cold potatoes out of our hand, would not give a damn and would slap in the face anyone who would laugh or jeer at us if we were to see that day. But it is different for a little child, going in with other children who have bread, who has to produce a cold potato and is held up to ridicule. That is not a small measure of suffering for country people. They have their pride as we have our pride. It reflects bitterly on us that we should add to the many burdens they have to bear at the present time that additional distress of being struck atthrough their children.

If this Minister had taken the control off oats and barley last January, I believe we would have a surplus of both these cereals in the fall of this year. If we had a large surplus of barley we could put into the millers' grist up to, I believe, 30 per cent. of a 65 per cent. extraction barley meal. If we had that, plus the wheat we would have got, plus the wheat we could have imported, we could have told the boys who were organising the 60/- and 70/- ramp where to get off, and I am not without hope that we will be able to do it yet.

Do Deputies in this House remember 18 months ago when I pressed this present Government to negotiate an exchange agreement with Great Britain of wheat for barley? Do Deputies in this House remember my telling them that I went to the Taoiseach myself and left in his hands a memorandum, that he still has, pointing out to him that he could go to the British at a time when our granaries were full and say to the British: "We are not asking any favour; we are not asking any concession; we are coming to offer you, the British, an advantage? We are prepared to swop with you 25 cwt. of barley for 20 cwt. of wheat and you will pay us the current price for barley on the date of delivery and we will pay you the current price for wheat on the date of delivery. That means that for every 100 tons of wheat you deliver to us we will give you 125 tons of barley and so we will save you 25 tons of shipping on every 100 tons that we exchange. Now we happen to want wheat and you want shipping. We are prepared to give you, on 1,000,000 tons of wheat, 250,000 tons of shipping for nothing. The only consideration we ask for that is that you should oblige us by making that exchange. We are giving you something concrete that your own shipyards cannot give you, that the United States of America cannot produce in sufficient quantity, but that we can give you—shipping space for nothing— and all we ask for is wheat at the current price and that you will pay us for the barley." Do you know what I was told? That it was administratively impossible. "All right," I said, "that is your business." I took it that they had examined it closely and made up their mind that it would not work. But they are doing it now and they are doing it 18 months too late. They start the negotiations when there is not enough in the storage granaries in this country to feed a canary. Instead of going with their heads up, expressing comparative indifference at the issue of the negotiations, they have to go in a panic using blackmail as an instrument of negotiation. All I can hope is that that lesson of incompetence will teach them something in future.

I put it to the Minister that what he should do now is to face whatever inconvenience this proposal will involve. He should take the control off oats and barley and say to every farmer with 50 acres of arable land: "You must sow some proportion of wheat now." I know well that that will result in certain pieces of land in this country yielding an utterly unsatisfactory crop. But I say that if I had on my land to let two acres go under wheat, even though the land was quite unsuited to wheat, and was given a free leg to grow as much oats and barley as I wanted and to sell it at such a price as I could get for it, it would pay me better than to be constrained to sell oats and barley at the price fixed by the Government at present without any obligation at all to grow wheat. I know it is not the ideal thing to do, I know it is not-the perfect thing to do to compel farmers indiscriminately to sow arable land with wheat. Of course it is not a thing that any sane man would think of doing if we were living in normal times. The citizens of Derry would not have eaten rats if they could have avoided it, but there was no other food to be got.

You cannot get wheat the way you are going about it. You have admitted that, and although you have raised the price from 32/- to 50/-, you are still not getting wheat. By the way you are going about it, you are not only failing to get wheat, but you are killing off barley and oats as well. My plan will get barley and oats and wheat, and we will get along all right. There is no fleet sailing the seven seas that could starve us into subjection if the land was producing as much wheat, oats and barley as it was capable of producing. There is no use in maintaining the pretence that the Fianna Fáil policy of "Grow more wheat" ever secured the assent of the majority of the people. No sane man ever believed in it. The fools who thought they could get rich quickly have discovered it, and, being in the vast majority cheap money-grabbing chancers, they are backing out of it now because they think they can make more money in some other way. The responsible men who never grew it during the years of Fianna Fáil folly are ploughing up land and growing it now, because the people want it and are entitled to get it, and will get it in abundant supply from the fertile acres which have not been debauched by Fianna Fáil proprietors during the last ten years. But we have to get after the Fianna Fáil chancers who are backing out of their obligations now, and force them to grow the wheat they are too mean to grow. When they came snivelling to me about their inability satisfactorily to grow that crop at present, I reminded them of the time when they were trying to force their neighbours to grow it, because it was their own political racket, and I told them: "We are going to make you do for the community what you tried to make your neighbours do for your own dirty political ends." I know that certain acres will be lost, but these are acres which will produce very little in any case. If we enforced 600,000 or 700,000 acres of wheat equitably distributed over the farms of Ireland where there is more than a certain proportion of arable land available and then said to the farmers: "If you are going to lose money on wheat you are obliged to sow, make it up with an increased sowing of barley and oats, and get your profit on these crops from what you feed them to, or from selling them. You will come out all right in the balance," we would get the wheat, oats and barley, and between the three all question of poverty or hunger in this country would disappear.

I was shocked when I heard Deputy Hughes calling on the Government to set up a post-war reconstruction council. What has the agricultural industry got from this Government's regulation heretofore? Every time they interfered they made a mess of it. So far as I am concerned, the less intervention there is by the present Government the better off we will be. Do not forget also, as Deputy Hughes pointed out, that with the disappearance of artificial manure we must have something to maintain the fertility of the soil. Where does manure come from? Is it not from the fed beast and from the straw that feeds him and beds him? Not only will you have hunger intensified in this country if you do not stimulate oats and barley, but you will have the disappearance of manure. Take any economist in the world and he will tell you that the hall-mark of a demoralised and sinking people is the eating of their seed. It is equally true to say that people who lose sight of the significance of the manure with which to fertilise their land are a people gone mad and given up to self-destruction. Oats and barley are the key to the present problem. The only way you will get anything out of the Fianna Fáil wheat growers in this country is to make them grow it. The public-spirited citizen is growing wheat on fertile land and will grow more than his quota. Make the others grow it and use the three crops to meet the people's requirements.

Now, I want to say a word with reference to pigs. There is danger of there being no pigs in the country, and we are short of bacon. Did any Fianna Fáil Deputy ever think that the day would come when there would not be enough bacon in this country to feed our own people? Did they ever believe the Minister was capable of it? The Minister for Agriculture has performed miracles, I admit, but did you ever think he could do that? Giving him all the rope that my imagination ran to, I did not think he would be able to do it, but he has. There is no prodigy of which he is not capable. I must say that he had to get help to achieve this, to slaughter off the whole pig population. I admit that he found that task beyond his single-handed capacity so he instituted the Pigs and Bacon Marketing Board. Between them, they have worked the oracle. Do you realise what they haye done? Think, because it is almost incredible. At the moment when the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance was telling us that fuel was unobtainable for the hearths of the people, for the reason that he could not get fuel to Dublin as the transport system had sat down upon them, the Pigs and Bacon Marketing Board were bringing empty wagons from Sligo to Ballaghaderreen and filling wagons with live pigs they had taken out of the pig curer's pen there and shipping them by rail to Claremorris. On one occasion, they shipped pigs from Ballaghaderreen to Sligo on Tuesday after they had shipped pigs from Sligo to Claremorris on the previous Monday. And the Parliamentary Secretary was looking for wagons to bring turf to Dublin!

We were all told: "Burn less coal, consume less gas, save fuel at all costs." The fuel was there in abundance, the problem being to get it to the centres of consumption. Yet, the transport required for that purpose was engaged in taking pigs from Bailaghaderreen to Sligo to fill up places that had been vacated by pigs sent from Sligo to Claremorris the day before. Can you conceive a situation in which men are standing idle in the bacon factory, the bacon factory is anxious to buy pigs and the farmers bring pigs over seven miles to the market? Can you conceive a situation in which a Government inspector intervenes and says: "Stop, you must slaughter no more pigs; you cannot convert any more of these pigs into bacon in Ballaghaderreen; you must bring these pigs seven miles home and seven miles back again to-morrow? We will have a fellow here to buy them and he will ship them alive from here to a place 40 or 50 miles distant, and the pig that would produce 1 cwt. at slaughter on the day you first brought it into the factory will produce about 7 stone weight after it has been kicked about in a cart and in a railway wagon before it reaches the Claremorris factory. However, we do not give a damn. That has got to be done because the Pigs and Bacon Marketing Board in Mount Street say: ‘It has got to be done. If you do not like it, you can lump it. You are a lot of country yobs, anyway, and we are educated men from Dublin?'" Yet Deputies here stand for that and believe in that. They vote for that. They want that. Does the rest of the House want that?

You have a pair of pigs ready and you go up to the local factory. You say that these pigs are just the right weight now. You are then confronted by the curer, who says: "But the inspector will not let us take them." You ask: "When will he let you take them?" He replies: "Come back to me on the 15th May." Back you come on the 15th May; he kills the two pigs and you find that the pigs are a stone heavier now. Then the curer says to you: "We shall have to take 12/-, 14/- or 18/- per cwt. off the price because these pigs are too heavy for the trade." After six weeks' additional feeding, you find that you get less for your pair of pigs than you would have got if they had been slaughtered on the first day you brought them in. But that is not all. You happen to be a fellow who is selling bacon. You go up to the local factory and the local factory owner takes down some lean sides of bacon. You tell him that you like heavy sides. You ask him: "What is the price of these sides?" and he says "170/- per cwt." You then say: "I will take a couple of the sides of the pigs for which you paid me 18/- a cwt. less last week." He then says: "But there is a better demand for that class of bacon than there is for this. That is 172/- per cwt." And that is true. The fat bacon is more suited to the domestic trade than the lean bacon.

It is quite true that when we were shipping bacon to the London or Liverpool market they wanted the lean Danish style side of bacon, but the Irish people do not, as the Birmingham people did not. They like fat bacon, but when you ask the curer to give you two sides of the fat pig for which you were paid 18/- per cwt. less than the ruling price for lean pigs, he tells you that it will cost you 2/- per cwt. more. He says: "I cannot get fat pigs, with the result that I have very few fat sides, but 80 per cent. of the country people want fat sides of bacon." There are 11 Fianna Fáil Deputies present here at the moment and they know that that is true. They are all simple fellows, born on the land. Even Deputy Victory——

Mr. Victory

You are talking self-sufficiency now for the first time.

Mr. Dillon

Self-sufficiency my foot! Before the war is finished you will have got a stomach-full of self-sufficiency. When the Deputy wears out the tyres of his bicycle he will need to watch Deputy Childers even more than he has in the past. That will be what his self-sufficiency policy will do for him. He will then have to wear the soles of his boots to the toes, and I hope he will like it. These Deputies know that these things are happening, but whether it is that they are too puerile or too cowardly to go and tell the Minister who is responsible for it that this must stop, and that they want to see the man who produces the pig getting a fair price, I do not know, but they have done nothing about it up to the present. They all know the farmers just as well as I know them, but they cannot do anything about it. Why? Was not that what they were elected for, to fight for their own constituents? There is Deputy Sheridan from Cavan, a big pig-rearing district. He knows that every word I say is true but he never opens his beak. He has not said a word on behalf of the pig producers of his county, not a whimper. There is Deputy Beegan from Galway, and he knows what I say is true.

Deputy Victory from Longford comes from an area that, in a great part, is pig-producing. Not one of them will open their beaks, but they all know what I say is true. Are they more afraid of the Minister than they are of their own constituents? If that is the case, it is their constituents' own fault, and the devil mend them if their constituents do not put it up to them. Until their constituents do put it up to them, from my knowledge of these three gentlemen, devil much will happen.

Mr. Beegan

Does anybody realise that there is a tariff on agricultural implements at present? Would any sane man believe that, at a time when supplies of metal of all sorts are getting scarcer and scarcer the world over, no farmer can import a mowing machine to this country without paying a heavy tariff on it? Do Deputies know that we cannot import a Deering mowing machine because there is a tariff on it, and because the Deering Company give that excuse, we cannot get parts and we cannot get reaping attachments or any of the ancillary fittings for a Deering mowing machine? Do Deputies realise that it was only a very few days ago that the Minister suddenly woke up to the fact that the manufacturers of spades, shovels and forks in this country could not anything like meet the demand of the Turf Development Board and the normal requirements of the farmers? It was only when there were no forks, no spades and no shovels to be got that it suddenly dawned on him that he had better do something about it, and he then took the tariff off. Of course, it was then quite impossible to get any supplies, because the British Government would not let them out. So far as I know, if you send an order to the Galway foundry at present, it will be two or three months before the order will even be considered, because their entire production is required for the Turf Development Board, and the result of it all is that the cost of agricultural implements will go sky-high.

I want to be quite frank about this. I think that one of the great mistakes the agricultural community in this country have made is that they have always had "the poor mouth". They are always lamenting, but it is all "cod" to pretend that the average farmer is not making money at present. He is making plenty of money, and we all know it. I know some old warriors, who know the difference between profit and loss, who went out and paid 27/- a cwt. for oats, and so profound is my respect for their wisdom and skill in farming that I know damn well that they were not paying 27/- for oats if it did not pay them to pay 27/- for oats. When a farmer can pay 27/- a cwt. for oats and make a profit on the transaction, and is free to grow oats on his own soil, do not tell me he is not making money. If he is not making money, he is spending too much time at the pictures. That is the only explanation of it. Do not let us come to these Houses of Parliament and make "a poor mouth" and say: "We cannot make any money and you ought to give us subsidies. We are entitled to a dole and to a bit of encourage ment." Be damned to their doles! We never wanted doles, if they would leave us alone and let us earn our money. We want no subsidies if they would get out of our way and let us make the profit that we are entitled to make by our work. We want no doles; we want no assistance. All the farmers of the country ever wanted was to get the landlords off their backs, and we have not got Fianna Fáil to thank for that. Give us that and a fair field, and we will make our land pay. Given a free field now, we can make it pay without any doles, or subsidies, or any help from the Fianna Fáil Government.

Every branch of the agricultural industry which stands in need of doles and assistance at present stands in that need as a result of Fianna Fáil interference with the free functioning of that branch of the industry. If they would get out of our life, they could keep their doles and subsidies. I do not want them in any case, and I believe that 90 per cent. of the farmers would make a good living on their land at present if they were merely given a free field in which to ply their trade. I was not afraid to say in this House, when I believed that the agricultural community were in dire straits, that they were brought to those straits by that Government. They were bankrupted and ground into the dirt by that Government and the misfortunes that have fallen on them in the last ten years are, directly or indirectly, attributable to that Government; but now, in that Government's despite, the agricultural industry can pay its own way, and I say: "To hell with their doles and their subsidies; all I want is freedom from their incompetent interference."

There are two minor matters I want to refer to. I wish that speakers here would take this occasion to explain why it is that farmers will not co-operate with the cow-testing organisations in the country. I have followed this up pretty closely and I have sometimes been reluctantly forced to the conclusion that farmers did not want to know what the milk yield of their cows was. They had a kind of feeling that so long as a cow looks good, better let the hare sit. They do not want to discover—certain individuals amongst them—that a cow which seems to be a good milch cow gives, in fact, about 280 gallons when you keep her on test during the whole period of her lactation. They like to believe that the fine flush of milk she had for the first month after she calved was her characteristic for the entire period of her lactation. They want to turn their heads away when they observe that, in the second month of her pregnancy, her milk dries up and that she is a dry cow after four months' milking. That is what the cow-testing association demonstrates to them, and when you have shown them that that is the case, their next line of defence is: "Even if they are not as good as they ought to be, where will I get better? How can I afford it? I cannot get substitute cows." They are free men, and if they want to go on in that way I suppose that in a free country they are entitled to do so; but they are not entitled to come to Dáil Eireann for help and assistance for the dairying industry, until the men in the dairying industry are able to demonstrate to Dáil Eireann that they are doing their part.

I agree with Deputy Bennett that if the dairy farmers can demonstrate to Dáil Eireann that they are doing all that efficient and industrious men could do to make their industry successful, so vital is that industry to the whole agricultural set-up of this country that I believe Dáil Eireann would be coerced into giving these farmers such help as was requisite to keep them in existence. I often wonder, if the dairy farmers of Ireland determined to eliminate everything below the 450-gallon cow and, indeed, most animals above the 800-gallon mark, and had every cow in Ireland on a dairy farm between those two levels, whether they would be able to come here and say: "To hell with your subsidies; we do not want them; give us a free field and, with our milk production per head per flock, wherever the herd, we will be able to make it up. Take the tariffs and taxes off our raw material; let us buy the raw material of our industry in the cheapest market, as our competitors do, and the price we will get for the volume of milk that will be produced will leave us a margin between our cost and income sufficient to keep us going without any Government help." That is not a popular thing to say to the farmers of Limerick, or to the dairy farmers of Ireland, but I think it ought to be said, because it is true.

If the dairy industry wants help from the community there is upon the dairy industry an obligation to demonstrate that those engaged in it are doing their part of the job, and they cannot illustrate that until they can prove that 99 per cent. of the dairy cows whose milk is being sent to co-operative creameries are producing more than 400 gallons of milk and less than 800 gallons. As we all know, the fancy milk producer, the cow producing 1,000 or 1,200 gallons, is very often elusive; the extra feeding to keep that cow at the maximum production makes the production of milk from such a cow an uneconomic proposition, albeit that such cows may be valuable as the breeding source of dairy bulls, in that way enabling the transfer of that immense milk-producing capacity to succeeding generations of cattle. But, as a commercial milk producer, it is doubtful if the immensely heavy milkers are an economic proposition. I would not ask the dairy industry to produce any such animal in order to demonstrate efficiency. Give me the cows with a production between 400 gallons and 800 gallons and, so far as I am concerned, I will vouch for the fact that the dairy farmers are doing all they can do to provide the most efficient animals for the purposes they have in mind.

The last thing I want to refer to is veterinary research and education, subjects to which Deputy Fagan also made reference. This country, of all countries in the world, should be the first in that field, and I do not think I exaggerate when I say that it is damn nearly the last. I do not suppose you could ever speak the truth without treading on somebody's corns, but I think that the veterinary college in this country is antediluvian. That is the truth. I think the veterinary college in this country is thinking and teaching in the terms of Niemeyer's medicine. That is the plain truth and I think it is a scandal that that should be so.

People may ask: "What would you do?" I do not believe in finding fault if I have not a plan. I would have a sum of money just as great as that expended on the new offices for Mr. Lemass, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, and I would invite the finest architects in the world to prepare themselves for a competition in designing the lay-out of a veterinary college and ancillary buildings without limit. I would then seek, by advertisement or by any other efficient means to secure the services of the most distinguished veterinary surgeons in the world, bacteriologists, veterinary physiologists, the leaders of their professions, at salaries that would command the services of the very best men. I would gather then in Dublin, or whatever centre is occupied by our college, a galaxy of talent that would command respect from every veterinary faculty in the world and, under the supervision of the man who would ultimately be chosen as director, I would initiate a competition for the design and erection of our veterinary college.

I would end up with this much achieved, in any case, that I would have assembled in the finest premises in the world the greatest galaxy of talent that financial inducement was capable of bringing together and then I would leave it to the children of our own people to benefit from that centre of education until I could make all Ireland in veterinary surgery what Vienna was in cardiology pre-war. If you do not start on an undertaking of that kind with that kind of concept, it would be much better to do nothing at all. Go on with the old cow-house you have got; go on turning out the uneducated men who are being turned out; go on leaving Irishmen who want to become veterinary surgeons under the disability that there is not accessible to them the same standard of education that men of all the other nations in the world who desire to follow that profession have available.

I do not know what the next Government in this country will be like. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Local Government, Deputy Ward, on several recent occasions prayed that there will be a change soon. It is the first time I ever found myself in agreement with Deputy Ward. We are both on the one word there. Any change would be better than the one we have got. It may take time, but some day we will get a Government who will do in regard to veterinary medicine what I am suggesting now. It would not be a bad tombstone for the Minister for Agriculture to set up over his political reputation, because people who look back on the ten years' devastation represented by his administration will say: "At least he left one monument, behind which he can hide his reputation." I would be there when he would cut the ribbon. The sky is the limit. The Minister can erect his own memorial and he can call it with his own name. I think I can end these few observations with the traditional ending so frequently heard at public meetings at every cross-roads and chapel gate in Ireland: "If he will do that, it will be the best day's work he ever did for himself and the best day's work he ever did for Ireland."

Mr. Corry

I have listened for an hour and a half to scurrility. I understood that this was a neutral country. We have heard a friendly country alluded to here to-night as "the Nazi beast". If I held the views that Deputy Dillon holds, and if I were the able-bodied young man that Deputy Dillon still is, I would go across the Border, get into a uniform, and try to do something to justify the opinions I held. Deputy Dillon said that he was stating here what the people of his constituency wanted him to say. Well, there is no accounting for tastes and there is no accounting for people, but I very much doubt if the people of Monaghan want Deputy Dillon to get them into the war, and I very much doubt if they would stand for the statement made by Deputy Dillon here to-night about a friendly State.

Deputy Dillon was amazed that the people had elected the Fianna Fáil Party and Government. He himself was recently put out of a Party, and, judging by the applause that every word of his received from them here to-night, they want to take him back. I sincerely hope they do, because I can honestly say that Deputy Dillon was 95 per cent. of the reason why this Government is in office to-day. All you had to do to win any by-election was to go out with five or six of his speeches here and read them to the people at the cross-roads, and you had them tumbling over one another at the polling booths to return the Fianna Fáil candidates with majorities of 17,000 and 18,000. There was no bother about it. I hope they will take the Deputy back soon, and, judging by their attitude here to-night, they are anxious to get him back.

The Deputy first attacked the farming community, whom he claims to protect and whose spokesman he claims to be here. He attacked every farmer who grew wheat, as a Fianna Fáil racketeer. We know the views the Deputy has expressed in this House since this war started, and if he had been the responsible Minister for Agriculture and if those views had been carried out—the views about the people growing no wheat and about getting ten boat loads a week from Britain to feed us—we know what would be our position. Of course, Deputy Dillon's statement here to-night about the country with which Great Britain is at war shows exactly what he is anxious to do, but I, for one, would not be in favour of pledging the life-blood of the young men of this country even for the bread that Deputy Dillon was anxious that we should have. That, however, was Deputy Dillon's policy and that has been his policy throughout. He is evidently still anxious to find some way by which this country will be got into the war on the side of one belligerent against the other.

Deputy Dillon made what I call a most contemptible attack on the Minister for Agriculture to-night. When we look for Deputy Dillon's cure for all the ills, we find that he wants an open market for barley. Let the price go as high as you like, with no stop to it, and then, when the price was high enough, even considering what the brewer would have to pay— and I have no objection to bleeding the brewer—the Deputy was going to take 55 per cent. of the barley that was going to be grown instead of wheat, and mix it with wheat. Naturally, the farmer will grow what pays him best, and if I can get from 70/- to 100/- a barrel for barley, I would be an awful idiot if I were to grow wheat at 50/-. According to Deputy Dillon's idea we were working a ramp to get 50/- for it. However, he wanted to take 55 per cent. of that barley, at from 70/- to 100/- a barrel, and mix it with wheat to get flour for the people. I wonder what price the bread would be then, but that is Deputy Dillon's cure. First of all, there was to be no limit, no bar at all to the price of barley; let it go as high as it liked, the higher it went the better for us, and then, when you would have grown in this country half the acreage of wheat that is being grown at present and three times the acreage of barley that is being grown at present, Deputy Dillon is going to take 55 per cent. of the barley, take it into the mills and mill it for flour at 70/- a barrel of 16 stones, and that is the bread with which he is going to feed the people during the war. If you work it out, you will find that it would be somewhere around 2/- for a 4-lb. loaf. That is Deputy Dillon's cure. That is his policy, and that is the policy that he attacked our Minister for Agriculture for not carrying out.

My only complaint about the Minister is that he has not exercised compulsory powers. I hold that 25 per cent. is not a sufficient acreage to put under the plough. When you take into consideration the amount of grain and feeding stuffs that came into this country pre-war, and when you allow for the fact that at present we have no means of substituting that except by oats and barley, you can realise where the scarcity of oats and barley came in. Oats and barley which, in the ordinary course, would have been thrown on the market for sale, had to be used for feeding the live stock that we previously fed on maize meal, cotton seed meal, cotton cake, and all the rest of it, and you have got to make an allowance for that first of all. The next thing I would advise the Minister to do is to make the growing of wheat compulsory on arable land. We have some 700,000 acres of ground manured after roots in this country last year. I would insist on at least 75 per cent. of that land being put under wheat. Nobody can tell me that it would not grow a good crop—75 per cent. of the manured ground after roots. In that way you would get at least the bulk of your wheat, and you would get the balance quite easily from good lea land.

There is another suggestion I would make regarding the wheat shortage. I would not agree with Deputy Hughes for one moment in regard to facilities for tillage. I do not believe there is any farmer in this country who, knowing his responsibilities as he did last October, could not make arrangements for getting 25 per cent. of his land ploughed, and there is no good in pretending otherwise. There are enough tractors here to plough all 25 per cent. of the land, not to mind the horses.

Mr. Hughes

In some districts, yes.

Mr. Corry

I would make it compulsory on any farmer who thinks that he could not plough the acreage required of him to notify the nearest Civic Guard station some time before the 1st October, so that the land could be entered on in time and ploughed. In the second place, I agree with Deputy Hughes as regards the manner of taking the census of production. At the present day, with the facilities that we have at our command, and parish councils in nearly every parish, the Local Security Force and the Local Defence Force, you have at least enough young men in every parish. I would hand over to these men the preparation of a proper tillage return, and would have no difficulty in getting it within a week. It would be a return from every parish, signed by each farmer, showing the amount he had ploughed and the acreage he had under tillage. I would then get my inspectors and say to them: "There is the return from one parish; pick out three farms in that parish and go out and test the return." If three or four farmers were taken in each parish the whole job would be done, and done far more cheaply and better than by coming along in the month of April and trying to plough lea land for crops, because the man who had the land did not plough it.

There are ways and means of doing these things, and we should get down and do them. It will have to be done, anyway, for the next three or four years, and the sooner the country makes up its mind to that the better. Even if this war ends to-morrow morning there will be a scarcity of everything for the next three or four years. We could take a three or four year term and work on that basis. Let us have no law or mercy for the man who, owning land, fails to do his share of the tillage; I do not care who he is or what the circumstances are. If he is unable to till his quota, his duty is to notify the Government or the Minister responsible in time to have that land tilled and a crop gathered from it. That should be one of the responsibilities of the farming community, and they should stand up to it.

I should also like to draw the Minister's attention to the growing of small seeds. Last year some merchants in my county and in other counties, as well as here in Dublin, gave out contracts for the growing of mangel and turnip seeds. These contracts were given out roughly at 80/- per cwt., that is to say, at the same price, roughly, as for beet seed. The beet seed is now being sold, delivered to farmers, at 1/10 a 1b. according to published advertisements in the Press. I do not believe the Sugar Company intend to work at a loss in this job; therefore, it paid them to buy the seed roughly at 8d. or 8½d. per 1b. and sell it back at 1/10 after cleaning it. But the merchant comes along, buys his mangel seed at the same price and now is offering it for sale at 4/- or 5/- a 1b.

Mr. Hickey

Do you suggest paying a subsidy on milk?

Mr. Corry

I am dealing with the position as I see it in the dairying industry. It is hard to find a cure. Would Deputy Hughes and Deputies who come from counties that produce beef be prepared to have a levy of, say, £2 per head on fat stock going out in order to subsidise the industry at the other end?

Mr. Brodrick

They will not have fat stock if there is not dairying.

Mr. Corry

I am suggesting a way out. I could not suggest planning ahead for a post-war period in regard to anything we have to export, because we do not know where we will be sending exports, and do not know who will be able to pay for them. After this war the £ note might be in the same position as the German mark was after the last war. It is very hard to have a post-war policy, such as Deputy Hughes suggests, beyond seeing that our own people are not deprived of food. If we have no exports of butter, or if there is no butter to export, then I would increase the price of butter in this country so as to enable the dairying industry to carry on. That is the only way out. We cannot hope to carry on dairying otherwise than by paying a subsidy to keep it in the only market to which it is sent. But that must stop sometime.

I wish to call the Minister's attention to the working of the Livestock Breeding Act. I do not know under what heading it comes in the Estimate, but I want to repeat a statement that was made by a former Minister for Agriculture, the first year he was in opposition, when he said that after six years' experience of that Act in his view if it was carried on as it had been for the six years he was in office, while they might have very fine cattle and very fine bullocks, he believed it would be impossible to find a decent milking cow. I am afraid that that is one of the results of the working of the Livestock Breeding Act. Bulls are judged not for their milking strain, but for beef and appearance. That policy is killing the milking strain. I wish the Minister would change that policy in some way. When bulls are brought in the officials should allow them to be judged on the milking strain of the dam and sire and not so much on the type of animal that makes good beef. If the dairying industry is to be preserved, in my opinion there can be no such thing as a dual purpose cow. There is no use in pretending the contrary. The animal must either be bred for beef or for milk. I consider that the Minister for Agriculture is doing well, and has done his work well, and I have very little fault to find with him or with the Department. If I had they would hear about it.

Mr. Curran

I am not going to follow all Deputy Corry's statements, but reference has been made about making the growing of wheat compulsory, and that there are 700,000 acres of tillage land on which wheat could be grown. Anybody conversant with land knows very well that there are acres of land on the mountain side which are tilled but that would never grow wheat, and that would not be suitable for that crop. The Department knows that as well as I do. It is as well that Deputy Corry should know that during the last war that question was examined very carefully. I am sure the Minister for Agriculture and the officials of the Department are aware of that, and that as a result they did not advocate the compulsory tillage of a percentage of any farmer's land, because they did not believe such a policy would help. I believe it would not be good business to compel the farmers in a particular district to grow a certain percentage of wheat. I wonder if there has been a shortage of the spring variety of seed wheat. I happen to be connected with a creamery society, and I was there during the past week. I saw a load of stuff being backed into the store. I asked what it was and I was told it was seed wheat. I asked if all the seed wheat which had been in stock was sold, and I was told it was. The huge stocks which that creamery was carrying were something of a worry to the members of the committee. While I was speaking to the creamery manager, messages came out twice that he was wanted on the 'phone to deal with inquiries about seed wheat. Whether that is typical of other districts, I do not know. I can only speak for my own area. I hope the supplies of the spring variety of seed, wheat are sufficient to meet requirements. The only drawback to the obtaining of sufficient wheat in the coming harvest is the absence of artificial manures. I believe that a sufficient acreage of wheat has been sown and will be grown, but the yield is another matter.

In connection with the growing of wheat, I listened to an interesting lecture a short time ago from a county instructor, and I was very much struck by it. He said that the failure to secure a good return from lea or second lea was due to insufficient rolling or to the roller not being sufficiently heavy. I thoroughly agreed with him. I happened to have good wheat and bad wheat last year. In the field which yielded a bad return, the strange thing was that there was quite a decent crop in the headland, which convinced me that the instructor's theory regarding heavier rollers was borne out. He stated that, in the county in which he was operating, there were only three or four rollers sufficiently heavy to roll land for lea or second lea. I do not know whether or not that is the viewpoint of the higher officials of the Department of Agriculture. It would be much better policy to educate farmers on such lines than to be telling them that wheat is no harder on land than oats or barley. The farmer is a very conservative man and resents that. No matter what Deputy Dillon or the Minister for Agriculture or anybody else may say, he will try things for himself. If he finds that a crop is profitable, he will grow it and he will not care about what anybody said here or on the radio or at the cross-roads.

I believe there has been a good response to the compulsory tillage campaign. The farmers are complying with the Tillage Order and there is no sympathy for those who have not complied. The people realise the necessity of wheat-growing and tillage, and they are cultivating their land to a reasonable extent. Reference has been made to the lack of manures, and I suppose the situation cannot be helped. I regret that the Minister is leaving the House because I want to put a point to him. The last speaker and, I think, every speaker to-day, referred to the dairying industry. I am aware that a memorandum has been sent to the Minister for Agriculture with a request to meet a delegation representing the Dairy Congress, to discuss the price of milk. It is idle for anybody to say that 6d. per gallon, mentioned by the Minister as the average price of milk, is fair or reasonable. I say definitely that it is not. If something is not done in connection with this industry, the time is approaching when the same circumstances will arise with regard to butter production that have arisen in the case of other commodities, and then it will have to be rationed. Though I am not a great student of the dairying industry, I am interested in it and I have listened to people who have for years compiled statistics as regards the drop in the number of dairy cows and in milk production. I can see a very serious situation arising for the people of this country—and this country alone—with regard to the production of butter. I believe that that situation will arise next winter, and it will be a serious matter, because butter will have to be rationed.

Various remedies have been mentioned. I believe that the Government has the responsibility in this connection. I well remember the Minister for Agriculture putting a levy of 4d. per lb. on consumers of butter. That is to say, he put a tax of 4d. per lb. on butter and he justified that imposition by the fact that the consumers in other exporting countries to Great Britain— New Zealand and some other countries —were paying from 1/9 to 2/- per lb. for their butter, although it was sold at a considerably lesser price in the British market. Why should the British market be the model? Why should the price there be the price at which butter should be sold? Do not we all know that the British market was the dumping ground for butter from every exporting country in the world? Do we not know that butter requires less space in ships than most other commodities require? Why should the price in the British market be that which the farmer is compelled to take?

My opinion is that if the people of this country want to get butter they will have to pay for it. I see no other remedy and, if the Government do not approach the situation in the way they should, production will fall until the situation becomes serious. I prophesy that that situation will arise after this summer's production period. I have heard statements made by people in different districts who have gone out of cows and I know that co-operative creamery societies are gravely concerned as to how they will carry on, because supplies of milk have gone steadily down. I should like to know from the Minister if it is his intention to receive the delegation to which I have referred in connection with this problem of the dairying industry. I hope the Minister will answer that question when replying. He spoke yesterday about seeds. Deputy Corry said something about them to-day. I am not able to say whether farmers contracted for the supply of mangold seed or not, but I know that the seed situation is rather serious. The Minister told us yesterday that there was a plentiful supply of turnip seed but not of mangold seed. I went to some business houses in Dublin to-day and found the situation the other way round. I could get all the mangold seed I wanted but not turnip seed. I suppose the supply of seed will be scarce, but we may be able to get on with it. While my attitude is not to blame the Government for everything, I hope there will be a sufficient supply of seed available for our root crops.

The situation as regards the pig industry is, in my view, just as serious as that in the dairying industry. I listened to speeches made in Clonmel by the Secretary to the Department of Agriculture, and I know that the policy of the Government is to allow the pig and dairying industries to reach such a point that their output will be just sufficient to meet the requirements of our own people. But when an industry is allowed to reach that point, there is nothing to prevent its going below it. What I fear is that the pig industry will go below that point. I know, of course, in connection with this industry, that the prices that are being paid in the British market are not at all sufficient to meet the costs of production.

Deputy Dillon, or some other member, suggested that oats and barley should be left without any sort of control. My view is that the price of both should be related to the price for wheat which, as we know, has been fixed at 50/- a barrel. It is no inducement to a farmer to grow wheat at 2/6 a stone if he can get 3/- a stone for oats or barley. The latter are precarious crops and are just as expensive to grow as wheat. I do not know if the Government have yet fixed a price for oats and barley, but, as I have said, it should be related to the price of wheat. These crops should not be left to be sold at whatever price people are prepared to give for them. After all, apart from what Messrs. Guinness take, oats and barley may be regarded as the raw material for the bacon and poultry industries, for the feeding of cattle and the production of beef. If the dairy farmer has to pay 3/- a stone for barley, is it any wonder that he should be looking for an increased price for his milk? I believe there is a great scarcity of seed oats. I am not able to speak on that from personal experience, but my suggestion to the Government is to relate the price of barley and oats to the price of wheat.

I have not much more to say on the Estimate. I want to stress, in particular, the position of the dairying industry. I would be glad if the Minister would indicate if it is his intention to receive the delegation proposed in connection with the memo. sent in regard to that industry? It is a serious thing to find everything in connection with it going down—the number of cows, production and so on. It is our basic industry and, without it, we cannot have the live stock or anything else we need. If financial help be needed so that a reasonable price may be paid for the milk the farmer produces, then I think it ought to be forthcoming. The dairy farmer is the hardest working man we have in the country. He has a seven-day week and long hours. Everyone knows that he is getting a poor return for his labour. If what I suggest be done, it may mean, as Deputy Davin said, that the consumer will have to pay an increased price for his butter, but does anybody expect the farmer to produce a commodity at a loss? It has been proved beyond yea or nay that butter cannot be produced at the present price except at a loss? Therefore, whatever the remedy for that situation be it ought to be applied immediately. I think that of all classes of farmers in the country the dairy farmer ought to get a better deal than he is getting for his milk. I am not grumbling about wheat or beet or oats, but something, I suggest, ought to be done for the dairy farmer in connection with the milk that he sends to the creamery for conversion into butter.

Mr. Davin

One of the provisions in the Constitution, which the people of this State approved of, relates to the right of every citizen to a reasonable share of food, clothing and shelter. In the next couple of years it will be the duty of the Minister for Agriculture and of his colleagues in the Government to face up to the task of seeing that the citizens of the State are put in a position to take advantage of the right conferred on them in the Constitution. Statistics furnished to Deputies during the past few months show that about 25 per cent. of our citizens are trying to exist on an income that is below starvation level. If we examine the position from that point of view we find that close on 500,000 of our citizens are in receipt of old age pensions, widows' and orphans' pensions, home assistance, unemployment insurance, national health insurance and the payments they are entitled to receive as a result of their contribution to the unemployment insurance fund. It is a serious state of affairs that 25 per cent. of our citizens have not a sufficient income to enable them to buy bacon, butter, eggs or the other essential commodities to which they, as well as every other citizen, are entitled. How can any of the persons in receipt of assistance of the kind I have mentioned pay the present prices —2/6 or 2/8 per lb. for Irish bacon, 1/7 a lb. for creamery butter, ? to 4/- per dozen for eggs? The problem which the Minister for Agriculture is confronted with, if he wants to live up to the principles enshrined in the Constitution, is how to bring these commodities down to the price which will place them within the reach of the persons I mentioned, or alternatively, to bring the incomes of those in receipt of State assistance up to such a level as will enable them to buy bacon, butter and eggs of which we are supposed to have a surplus to-day.

The term "surplus agricultural produce" is a confusing one and is used by some people for the purpose of trying to confuse our people. Some people regard it as something over and above what people are entitled to consume. "Surplus" as a term commonly understood in this country, representing what is being exported, particularly in the shape of bacon, butter and eggs, is what is beyond the reach of a very large number of our citizens to buy. Supplies of essential commodities will be cut off from the people of this country for some years to come. The people must be fed during that period. That is the problem before the Minister for Agriculture, the Government and the members of this House. I think all the members of this Party have given enthusiastic support to the policy of self-sufficiency for which the Government stand. The Government have gone a long way in the right direction. I want to say that I, at any rate, appreciate that. I disagree entirely, as I have on many occasions disagreed in this House, with the attitude adopted by Deputy Dillon. If the policy which Deputy Dillon has advocated in this House on many occasions had been adopted there would be very little wheat available for the citizens of this State in the existing extraordinary circumstances. Deputy Dillon must realise that. I cannot understand why he still harps back to that old policy of his, indicating that it is ridiculous for our people to be encouraged to grow more wheat, more beet, and so on.

The Government by their dillydallying attitude in regard to fixing a price for wheat during the past six months have, I think, themselves to blame to some extent for the fact that some farmers have not faced up to their responsibilities. If the Government, through the Minister for Agriculture, or any of their authorised spokesmen, had indicated last September or October their willingness to pay 50/- per barrel for wheat, I am certain that much more of the arable land of the country would be under wheat to-day. There would be much more winter wheat and much more spring wheat put down and there would be greater certainty that the required acreage of wheat would be forthcoming during the current year. Personally, I could not understand why a Government that was prepared to pay 85/- per barrel for imported wheat could hesitate to pay 50/- per barrel for wheat grown at home. They were willing to import as much wheat as they could possibly get from outside and pay, roughly, 84/7 for it while they spent about three or four months considering whether they would increase the price in the home market from 45/- to 50/-. A certain amount of confusion has been created by the dillydallying attitude of the Government in that matter and they have themselves to blame for the situation that exists to-day.

I support, and this Party has always enthusiastically supported, the policy of this Government or any other Government that would encourage, and force in circumstances like the present, the land owners of this country to till a certain acreage of their arable land. I am not quite satisfied, from my experience of what is going on in my own constituency, which is a big tillage area, that the Government are doing what they should in this respect, even now. I have brought under the notice of the Department of Agriculture cases where large landowners were not tilling the necessary acreage of arable land. Steps were taken recently to acquire some of these lands, but in the case of large landowners with an acreage of 500 to 1,000 acres—and these were some of the cases that I have reported—I do not think the Department of Agriculture have been using the necessary pressure to compel these people to do their duty. I have seen cases where large landowners have been able to get excused because, it is alleged, a certain acreage of their land is taken up for stud farm purposes. I know of a case where a large landowner has put the Land Commission to considerable trouble for a number of years. This individual is, apparently, able to get away with it because he is supposed to have a stud farm and, as far as I know, the stud farm consists of two brood mares. The acreage of land is 600 and odd acres, in the County of Offaly. I do not want to go into the details of the case because I have been asking the Department of Agriculture to take certain action in cases of that kind. In the same case, I am informed, the landowner has been credited with tilling a certain ten-acre field, whereas he scratched three acres in the middle of it. When this case was reported to me first I did not believe it, but I can rely upon the confirmation which I have received from a Fianna Fáil Deputy who lives in the same parish and who has reported the same case, both verbally and in writing, to the Minister for Agriculture. I think it is a scandalous state of affairs that any landowner should get away with action of that kind. If the ten-acre field consists of arable land, the whole of the field should be under tillage.

The most serious thing confronting the people of the country and the Minister for Agriculture is the exodus of able-bodied young Irishmen from the rural parts of this country. I dare say the Minister for Lands, who is listening to me now, knows that as well as I do. I can see the emigration figures through certain channels every day. I see young fellows, coming off trains at Westland Row, from the West, emigrating every day with permits supplied by the Department of Industry and Commerce, to work on war work in England instead of doing the work which will be urgently necessary in the parts of the country from which they are now going away. Where are we to get the agricultural labourers that will be required to gather in the harvest, if this emigration is allowed to proceed without limitation?

I have heard it suggested in Ministerial circles that the Army might be used to help farmers to gather in the harvest. As most of us know, the Army consists mainly—so far as those who joined for the duration are concerned, anyway—of young fellows who have joined up from the cities and towns, whereas the emigration list consists of young men who are clearing away from the rural areas. The young men who know so much about turf cutting and the work associated with agricultural labourers are being allowed to clear out of the country with Government permits and, later on, we will be asked, as has been suggested recently, that a section of the Army should in certain circumstances assist the farmers in gathering in the harvest. Surely that kind of policy is not a considered policy?

Surely the members of the Cabinet do not think that that is a state of affairs they can stand over? I hope that some day in the near future the Cabinet will see where they are leading us by allowing a policy of that kind to be continued. If the harvest is to be gathered in and the fuel which is required by the people in the shape of turf is to be cut, the people to do it are the people who are now clearing out of the rural areas and who are far better fitted for that work, if given reasonable wages and working conditions, than the Army or any other section of the people living in towns and cities, who know nothing about the conditions that exist in the rural parts of the country. Between 1926 and 1941, 100,000 people left the rural areas. I do not say they all went out of the country. But, strange to say, since the beginning of 1941, more than that number left the country to join the British Army or to do work of a reconstructive nature in Great Britain or across the Border.

Generally speaking, the farmers have responded very well to the demands of the Government and the people in regard to tilling their lands. I think that considerable difficulty exists in the case of many farmers because of shortage of working capital. The cost of money to the agricultural industry is too dear. If we are to have a long-term agricultural policy which will get us over the crisis with which we are confronted and which will continue long after this war is terminated, the provision of cheap money for the agricultural community is a matter of urgent public and national importance. We have £216,000,000 on deposit in the banks because, I presume, the people who made that money mainly in industry were unable to get facilities for investing that money in Great Britain or outside the country, as they used to do in days gone by. That is why the bank deposits are increasing. The people who are putting money on deposit in the banks to-day have been in the habit of investing their money outside the country in years gone by to their own advantage. It is a terrible state of affairs to think that we have over £200,000,000 on deposit in our banks while, at the same time, the farming community have to pay an average of 6 per cent. for any loans that they may be lucky enough to get from the joint stock banks or even from the Agricultural Credit Corporation. The Agricultural Credit Corporation, which is a State-subsidised concern, is advertising money at 5 per cent.; but when all the charges in connection with the applications are taken into consideration, I think it is nearer to 6 per cent. than to 5 for the farmers who may be lucky enough to get loans sanctioned.

Mr. Linehan

Up to 7 per cent.

Mr. Davin

According to my information, it is certainly 6 per cent. Do the Minister and his colleagues think that 6 per cent. is a reasonable rate of interest for farmers to be compelled to pay in order to get the necessary working capital to enable them to provide our citizens with food and fuel in existing circumstances and for a number of years to come? To-day the Minister for Finance read extracts that suited his purpose from a speech made some time ago by the Minister for Finance in New Zealand. I asked what was the maximum rate of interest charged by the New Zealand State Bank for money for the carrying out of national development works, such as housing and agricultural development. I am informed that money has been made available for the carrying out of national development works in New Zealand at a rate of interest not exceeding 1½ per cent. That is why the people of New Zealand are in a prosperous condition to-day. That is why the farmers in New Zealand are able to pay their agricultural labourers £3 12s. per week, while we are growling and grumbling about bringing the wages of agricultural labourers up to 33/-.

I voted and so did my colleagues, and will continue to vote, for any policy which will give a profitable price to farmers for the production of the food required on condition that the farmers, or at least the decent farmers, and they are in the majority, will treat their agricultural labourers in a generous way so far as wages and conditions of work are concerned. The high interest rates charged by the banks to farmers and industrialists have a very bad effect on agricultural and industrial development. If the new Central Bank Bill now before the House serves any purpose, I hope it will have the result of reducing the interest rates which have been charged by the financiers for many years and which are the cause of the miserable condition of many of our tillage farmers.

Deputy Curran seems to misunderstand the attitude of the Labour Party in regard to dairy farmers. We supported the Government when members of his Party voted against proposals for subsidising the dairying industry. We went into the Division Lobby with the Minister for Agriculture when Fine Gael Deputies voted against the proposals. I am surprised that Deputy Curran, or any other Deputy on the Fine Gael Benches, should forget that. We will do so again in order to enable dairy farmers to get an economic price for their milk. I was listening recently to a number of experts in connection with the dairying industry. These people are well known to the Minister for Agriculture and to the advisers to the Minister. I was assured by them that it would not pay a dairy farmer to carry on the business of supplying creameries with milk at a price below 9d. per gallon. Everybody agrees that 6d. per gallon is not an economic price, but 9d. per gallon was given to me by people who know more about the business than I do.

Mr. L.J. Walsh

Then those who are getting 2/- per gallon must be all right?

Mr. Davin

They are getting away with it. My colleagues and I are prepared to support this Government in extending the subsidies up to a point where the dairy farmers will get a profitable price for milk, and in that way prevent the destruction of the dairying industry. I also want to encourage the Minister to extend, so far as is possible, the benefits which are being conferred through his Department on the farmers under the farm improvement scheme. That is a very good scheme, but it appears to me that sufficient money is not being made available for the purpose, and I am prepared to encourage the Minister to press the Department of Finance to provide more money for the carrying on of that very useful and necessary scheme.

I should also like to encourage the Minister to urge local authorities—and some local authorities are very lax in this matter—to do everything they possibly can to extend the scheme in connection with the acquisition of allotments. I think a good deal more could be done in that matter. I know one county in my constituency—I regret it is my native county—where very little has been done to take advantage of this scheme. It is a county which is administered by a commissioner, and the commissioner when pressed to provide plots for unemployed persons, passes on the baby to the parish council who have no powers to acquire land. I hope the Minister for Agriculture— his colleague who is now present might pass on the note to him—will get into touch with the commissioner administering the affairs of the Laoighis County Council and ginger him up in connection with this scheme.

Mr. Hickey

It is too late.

Mr. Davin

It is too late. I have been carrying on correspondence with the Minister for Local Government and the Minister for Agriculture on this matter, and if my suggestions had been adopted there would be many more plots in the county to-day under this scheme. It is silly for the commissioner concerned to try to pass on the baby to the parish councils, because he knows perfectly well it is his job to get the work done, and that the parish councils have no statutory authority to acquire land for the purpose. I know other areas also where this scheme could be utilised to better advantage.

Another matter which is of interest to the Minister for Agriculture, though I am not quite sure what powers the Minister has to deal with it in present circumstances, is that a housing scheme was submitted to the Local Government and the commissioner administering the affairs of the county nearly three years ago. In the majority of cases, there were 350 cases, the land required for the purpose of erecting labourers' cottages had been offered by agreement by the landowners concerned. Between the county board of health and the Local Government Department the scheme has been held up for a period of years. I have been pressing the commissioner and the Department of Local Government, if they could not see their way to build cottages on the land provided for the purpose, to consider the desirability of fencing the plots and letting them on a temporary tenancy basis to the original applicants, or more suitable applicants if available.

If that had been done hundreds of cottage plots in the County Laoighis —and there are other counties in a like situation—would be under tillage to-day and the labourers concerned would in the coming year get the benefit of the produce grown on these plots. We have plots that were freely offered by the landowners neither fenced nor tilled as far as I am aware up to the present. I should like the Minister for Agriculture to use his influence, if he has not the necessary power to take action himself, with the Minister for Local Government and the county boards of health in Laoighis and other counties that may be affected in that way.

I heard a statement here some time ago by the Minister for Agriculture dealing with the production of food in which it was indicated that, if sufficient foodstuffs were not available in the country, it might be necessary to kill a large number of live stock. If the Minister makes up his mind that it is desirable to kill a large number of live stock during the present year, because the necessary food is not available for man and beast, I would seriously suggest that the Government might consider the advisability of providing either free meat or meat at a nominal charge for necessitous people. Personally I prefer the provision of meat at a nominal figure for the poor for whom milk and other essential commodities are being provided by the Minister for Local Government. It is only a few years ago since we had a free meat scheme in operation. Some people thought that that scheme was too generously administered, and I have the idea, though a lot of people may say I am wrong, that it would be better to provide meat at a nominal price rather than give it free. If the time should come when the Minister for Agriculture has to face up to the killing of live stock, simply because the necessary foodstuffs are not available, I hope he will give favourable consideration to that suggestion.

I sympathise with the Minister in the position with which he is confronted in the present and coming year. Whether the war ends this year or not—I hope it will for the sake of humanity—this country is going to be confronted with a serious position and it will be the duty of the present Minister or whoever will succeed him during the next two, three, four or five years, to try to devise a long-term agricultural policy which will enable every citizen to get the right that is given him under the Constitution—a reasonable share of food, clothing and shelter.

Mr. O'Donovan

I think the very doleful statement we heard from the Minister last night with regard to conditions in the country may be attributed to the fact that the Minister in years past had forgotten that agriculture was our basic industry and that in dealing with other Ministers, he allowed them to divert attention to other channels and to forget that agriculture was in existence at all. The result is that agriculture is not on a firm basis to-day nor are any of our other industries. If the Minister had been more alive to the requirements of the agricultural community in the years gone by, when the Government were developing their self-sufficiency policy, our condition to-day would not be as bad as it undoubtedly is.

The Minister stated last night that the position with regard to cereal seed was satisfactory. I hope that is the case. I am satisfied that the area under cereals, as far as my own constituency is concerned, is greater than ever it was before. I know that there is a shortage of oats and that it was almost impossible to get seed oats. I do not know whether all the spring wheat sown this year will ripen, but I know that the people in my constituency grow wheat on land on which they are fairly sure of a good crop. They have been always wheat growers. The scarcity of seed this year was very noticeable in the greater part of the country.

The Minister said that the situation in regard to mangold seed was not very satisfactory, but that in regard to turnip seed it was somewhat better. I put a question some time last harvest inviting the Minister to give a broadcast or some instruction to those who carried out experiments in the production of turnip and mangold seeds. His reply was that they had got all the information necessary. I have learned since that information was given at seed time. Most of those who grew mangolds and turnips for seed never had any experience of the work before and it was a pity that such people did not get the necessary information at the proper time. The broadcasting of instructions is not satisfactory because farmers and those who are producing these seeds in most cases have not the advantage of possessing wireless sets. Their houses are not connected with the Shannon electricity scheme and even if they had wireless sets they could operate them only by batteries. The result was that much of the information intended for them did not reach them at all and, as a consequence, there was a big wastage of seeds in many places.

The Minister went on to refer to other conditions relating to agriculture. With regard to artificial manures, I suppose it would be impossible to remedy the situation at the moment. As I said at the commencement, when a tariff was put on artificial manures and on machinery of all sorts to try to encourage another branch of the industrial arm of this country, the agricultural interests were forgotten, with the result that we have not the artificial manures, nor have we the nails nor the iron nor the timber to keep the farm machinery and implements going. Between two stools we came to the ground. It is all very well to talk about horse-drawn machinery, and say we can fix it up with bolts and wedges. It is impossible. Our horses have always been accustomed to be shod, and they will not be able to do the heavy work they are faced with at the moment if we have not the iron to make their shoes. I do not know whether the Minister can remedy that situation now. I know of cases where old gates were broken up and taken to the forge to be forged into shoes for the horses, but the trouble with old iron is that you want good coal to turn it into horseshoes, and we have not got the coal. We have not even good turf. The Department in charge of turf production will probably make a better hand of it this year, and it may help us out.

I think some Deputy told us that there was a reasonable quantity of binder twine available, and there was a reference to the growth or development of flax for binder twine. I wonder has the Minister made any inquiries as to whether the flax fibre by itself will be suitable for binder twine? Does it not require a mixture of something stronger and coarser than the flax fibre? I am afraid unless the machines can be adjusted, and the knife for cutting the twine brought to a much finer edge than is required for cutting the manila cord, there will be a difficulty in that. I think it would be well to have some experiments carried out on a small scale. If they are successful, it would be a great impetus to the development of flax here. Flax was tried with some other substance in Canada, and it was not a success. At that time they had not the combined harvester. The corn was often left lying on the ground for ten or 12 or 14 days, and when it came to carrying it to the thresher they found that insects had eaten the flax. I do not think we would suffer from anything like that here, and it would be a development on right lines if we could encourage the manufacture of binder twine from flax.

Again, on the subject of artificial manures, which at present contain 20 per cent. phosphates and 2 per cent. nitrogen, most people are not very pleased with their quality or appearance. Knowing their composition, one wonders why they cost 10/6 a cwt. Who is making money out of the poor unfortunate farmer in this case? We have manures that have not been developed along our seaboard—sand and seaweed. This is a matter that the House is tired from hearing me talking about. The Minister, in reply to a question of mine, said that it was a matter for local enterprise.

Local enterprise has done remarkably well in handling this sand and seaweed, but local enterprise cannot extend its operations far beyond the coastline, and there are hundreds of thousands of people inland who would be glad to have the advantage of getting sand and seaweed. It certainly should be the policy of the Minister, if he wishes to help agriculture in the crisis it is going through at the moment, to see that sand and seaweed are carted inland, anywhere and everywhere they are required. I asked the Minister yesterday if any experiments had been carried out with regard to cement dust as a manure. He said he did not think so. I will get cement dust delivered to me in Clonakilty at, I think, 50/- a bag.

Dr. Ryan

A ton.

Mr. O'Donovan

Less 15/- if the bags are returned. Cement dust, I understand, is pretty difficult to get. Bags are scarce, transport is difficult, orders are plentiful, and there have been no experiments whatever carried out as to whether it is good, bad or indifferent as a manure; or whether it is worth 50/- or 30/- or 10/-; it may not be worth a chew of tobacco. We have experience of the value of sand and seaweed. Down at Castletownbere and Bantry there are large quantities of sand to be had for the dredging. That has been known for generations to be as useful and as good manure as can be put out. It is easy to lift it, not alone in Bantry Bay, but in Courtmacsherry and anywhere else that it is available. It is guaranteed to be a useful artificial manure. The Minister will go and experiment with a thing about which we know nothing, but he will not take an article of which we have had generations of experience, and which is there for the taking, or for the cost of lifting and the cost of transport. He will not carry out any experiments whatsoever with regard to it.

I think Deputy Dillon is right in saying that there is no use in advising the Minister on anything. The result is that we are left at the moment without manures. The Minister said it was a matter for local enterprise. The local people are well able to look after themselves, and have always done it, but people like those in Deputy Bennett's constituency, or in constituencies which are not as rich as that, such as areas in North Cork, where the land is poor and needs lime and sand, would find seaweed a useful adjunct in the carrying out of their tillage schemes. But they have got no encouragement in that direction. We can get cement dust from Drogheda. It may be good or it may be bad, but I am not satisfied that it will fulfil the conditions which the substance I mentioned could fulfil.

The Minister said that petrol for lorry owners was available for the haulage of sand and lime. I made appeals here more than once—I think, in all, three times—in connection with this matter, and urged that all the petrol or kerosene that could be made available for the haulage of sea-sand should be made available for these people engaged in the business. In spite of all the appeals, they have got only their usual monthly supply. In my own town of Clonakilty, people have come to me who wanted to get lorries of sand shifted 20 miles away, and have told me that they had gone down and got the locals to put the sand out on the road beside the strand and then had to wait for days and weeks, the lorries being idle in Clonakilty because they could not get petrol. We complained to the Department of Supplies about it, but they got no petrol beyond their ordinary 40 gallons allowance and 40 gallons supplementary allowance, which would not keep them going for one week in the four of the sand season. If the Minister for Agriculture would appeal even now to his colleague, the Minister for Supplies, for an extra allowance of petrol for lorries engaged in the haulage of sand, it would be very useful.

A good deal has been said with regard to butter and milch cows. I am afraid that when we became so terribly wheat-minded, we forgot that the milch cow was the basis of the agricultural economy of this country, and that from the milch cow springs everything else. With regard to butter, I was rationed in my hotel this morning, and I take it that we shall have to face that position for a little while. I can, like Deputy Curran, visualise a position next year, and perhaps before next year, in which the rationing of butter will be much more strict than what I experienced to-day. It is no wonder that we have rationing of butter when we realise that butter, since the war began, has remained at the same price. The price of the pound of cart-grease at the moment is rapidly approaching the price of butter, and when we reach that position, and when we in the dairying industry have to produce milk at sixpence a gallon all the year round, there is something very much wrong. Those who have studied the matter closely agree that the price is far below the cost of production, and if the milch cow, the foundation of our whole economy, is allowed to "go wallop", I do not know what will happen. It will mean good-bye to everything.

I hope the Minister even now, late in the season as it is, will not turn a deaf ear to the appeals made to him to consider the position of the dairy farmer; to agree that the milch cow is the most important factor in the economic life of the State, and that 6d. a gallon is not an economic price for milk; and to realise that the farmer in West Cork who is offered £30 for a springer will accept that price before he will agree to carry his milk three or four miles to a creamery to get 6d. a gallon for it. If the Minister's aim is to keep our good milch cows in the country, to encourage cow testing and the development of better breeds, better herds and bigger milkers, the one essential is that the price of butter and the price of milk be improved.

Much has been said with regard to pigs and I do not think it necessary for me to say much more, but in the constituency I represent there were more pigs fed than in any other part of the country. We had big feeders and small feeders, but there was scarcely a household in West Cork which was not producing and fattening pigs. Now there is not a pig worth talking about there, and I am afraid that, from the way things are going and by reason of the policy of the Minister in giving power to the Pigs Marketing Board to do what they like, in giving them power to tell a factory not to accept pigs at a certain time, so that when pigs are brought to a factory a fortnight later, as Deputy Dillon pointed out, they are overweight and the producer loses a good deal, the producer of pigs will not be able to continue.

I wonder which is the more useful to the country, the Pigs Marketing Board or the producers of pigs? We will soon never hear about pigs except when we see the Pigs Marketing Board mentioned in the Press or hear somebody talking about it. That is all we shall know about pigs in the very near future. The pig was always the poor man's friend and when the pig goes, God help us.

Another matter to which I want to refer is the position with which we will be faced during the summer and harvest. Deputies have referred to the exodus of all young men and that matter is terribly serious. If we have to face a big harvest—a big area under potatoes and other crops—without labour and possibly without machinery, much of the harvest may have to be cut with scythes, if we have them. We shall want the labour. The first thing the British Government did when the war started was to train not only men but women to work on the land. We have made no attempt to train anybody on the land here. There has not been a word about it. I put it to the Minister last year that we required men on the land and that men should be trained. Farm work is highly technical and those who engage in it need to be trained, to have experience and to know their jobs. It is not everybody who can milk a cow and it is not everybody who can feed chickens or pigs. Ploughing, harrowing, rolling, digging, cleansing, thinning of beet and all such jobs are highly technical and you cannot get a lad who never did it before to come in and do it without training, because he will spoil more than he will save.

I suggested to the Minister a year ago that there were numbers of farmers who wanted labour but could not afford to pay the wages, who would take and feed men for three months and that the State could give them their doles or whatever assistance they were getting for that period. At the end of three months, if they were worth their salt at all, they would be worth a wage, and, as their work improved, their wage could increase and their doles decrease, with the result that they would be useful citizens at the end of six, eight or, at most, 12 months. I believe that before 12 months, if they were any good at all, they would be useful citizens. No scheme of that type has been attempted. We merely sit on our oars here and say that God will help us, but if we leave it to God, He will leave it to us. The situation is that we face this harvest with no labour on the land and possibly with no machinery to gather the harvest. What good will all our appeals be if the harvest goes flop? What good will the appeals of the Taoiseach, the Minister for Agriculture and other Ministers for food production be if the harvest is not successful? I suggest, even at the eleventh hour, that the Government should try to hold all those people who are left to carry out some scheme such as I have suggested that would get those boys on the land and give them a little training before the harvest season arrives, training that would make them useful citizens and that would help the harvest at a time when a good harvest is so urgently needed.

In regard to artificial manures and manures generally, I suggested last year that there was a great waste of the sewage of our towns and cities— not alone our towns and cities, but sewage on our farmsteads. I suggested that a vast quantity of liquid manure was going to waste. I am glad a number of farmers have availed of improvement schemes and have erected liquid manure tanks, but there is still a terrible wastage of that valuable manure and some attempt should be made to save it for use on the land. There is money spent on many schemes that would not be as advantageous to the country as a scheme of this type, whereby you might save even a portion of the sewage of Dublin and the other cities and towns through the country. The local authorities could adopt a scheme of that kind, erect a little reservoir and endeavour to have the sewage conveyed into it to be used later for the purpose of manuring land. We are approaching a period when we may be very glad to fall back on a scheme of that sort, and I suggest that the sooner it is adopted and availed of the better it will be for our future food production.

Another matter of importance is a supply of spraying material. I wonder if there is a danger of a scarcity of spraying material. If there is a likelihood of a shortage and if we cannot get washing soda or bluestone, perhaps the Research Department might endeavour to ascertain if there is any other substance to replace washing soda or bluestone that will help to save the potato crop in the event of a disease visitation. I think the research section of the Department should endeavour to ascertain if there is anything to replace the spraying material to which we were accustomed. It is all very well to say that there is no danger of starvation here while we have potatoes and wheat, but if we got one bad week or fortnight in July those crops would go flop. These things should be looked after now. Our Department should be in the forefront to guard against every contingency. If one thing fails, let us have something else equally good in readiness.

A considerable amount of money was spent last year to cope with the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. We got rid of that disease, thanks be to God, in fairly good time. There has not been a word from the Department about it since, no indication whether they are making inquiries as to what caused the disease and why it spread; no word of how it will be possible to prevent it spreading should it ever occur here again. No notice has been given to the farmers and stockholders setting out the procedure they should adopt if it were the will of Providence that another outbreak should occur— God forbid that it ever should.

This is one of the diseases we should be fully prepared to deal with. The Department should notify the people through the Press, by broadcasting or by the circulation of leaflets, of the early symptoms of foot-and-mouth disease or, for that matter, any other stock disease that might be contagious. The people should be instructed how to prevent the spread of these diseases; they should be educated in the use of remedies and the hundred and one other things connected with such occurrences. If the Department carried out something along those lines it would be doing very useful work.

Other Deputies have stressed the value of research work. I hope that work will be continued and, whatever money is needed to try to combat diseases or epidemics of any type, I am sure no objection will be offered from any part of the House or from the people in the country, and the Government will be given whatever amount they require.

I should like to make some reference to the compulsory tillage order. No departmental inspectors have visited my place. I do not know how many of them are out or how they are doing their work this year. One thing I will say is that they went out too late. Appeals were made by Government spokesmen from time to time for an increase in tillage, and these appeals were well responded to. But when they were making these appeals in October and November the inspectors should be going through the country and advising the farmers of the Government's desire. These inspectors should have explained the position to the farmers; should have told them that if they were not prepared to carry out the amount of tillage required, the Government would take over their lands. The inspectors are now going through the country and they find that certain farmers have not done all the tillage required. It will be cold comfort for the people next September or October to find that these men who did not carry out their tillage obligations were fined or put in jail; it will be cold comfort especially when, if the inspectors went out early enough, a considerable amount of additional land would be put under cultivation.

The belated efforts of the Minister and the officials of the Department are largely responsible for the present condition of things. I believe much more land would have been cultivated if the inspectors went out at the end of last year and explained the position clearly to the farmers. There are cases where people are brought to court for not tilling a sufficient amount of land. I have one case in mind where a man, through no fault of his own, was ten or 12 acres short. He will probably be brought to court soon. The fact is that he was unable to get the kale seed that he required and he had to sow rape. Now he is going to suffer. I do not think there will be many cases of that sort, but in this particular instance, because of the circumstances, it is very unfair to bring the man into court. I do not think I have anything further to add to what I have said, and I hope that anything I said will help the Minister and the Department to improve conditions.

Mr. Cogan

I fear that I cannot but envy Deputy Dillon that happy, carefree and irresponsible manner in which he approaches this Estimate, and in which he approaches consideration of our agricultural problems generally. I, for my part, as a farmer, cannot approach the problems facing agriculture in anything but a serious manner. I fear that at the present moment the farmers and the nation are facing a very dangerous period. The nation to-day is facing an acute shortage of essential food supplies, and one of the alarming features of that situation is that through the spokesmen of the Government and the Government Party, and through the Press controlled by that Party, an attempt is being made to misrepresent the farmer and to make it appear that this shortage is due entirely to criminal negligence or laziness on the part of the farming community. We are told that there would be no bread shortage to-day, and no danger of it, if farmers had grown a sufficient amount of wheat in order to provide sufficient flour. But it must be remembered that flour can be produced from other cereals than wheat, and it must be remembered that a reasonable admixture of barley or oats with the wheat grown last year would have provided us with a sufficient amount of flour to carry us over to the end of the year. Unfortunately, however, through some bungling on the part of the Minister for Agriculture or the Minister for Supplies, no reasonable attempt was made to secure sufficient supplies of oats and barley to provide such an admixture as would give us a sufficient supply of flour for the year. The farmer was not at fault. The farmer produced sufficient cereals to give this country a 12-months' supply of flour, provided that there was an admixture in that flour of barley or oats, which were available after the harvest last year.

Now, it may be said that there was not sufficient oats or barley put on the market. I believe that the amount of oats and barley put on the market may have been less than was expected, but it was quite adequate to meet the needs of the millers to supplement our supplies of wheat. It was also quite adequate to provide our oat millers with a sufficient supply of oats for oatmeal for all human needs in this country. It must be remembered also that when our oat crop and barley crop were sold to the merchants last year the merchants bought those supplies under licence. They were, therefore, under the control of the Department of Agriculture. They could not part with any portion of that grain, which they had purchased, without a permit from the Department of Agriculture, and if the Department allowed them to part with it, as they did, it is through their own culpable negligence that the human population of this country are now short of flour and oatmeal. Accordingly, no blame can attach to the farmer. The Irish farmer did his job, and did it exceptionally well.

Yesterday, the Minister made a statement in connection with the reduction in the price of pigs. He said that the price of pigs was reduced because wheat was found in the stomachs of some of the pigs that had been killed. Now, it may not have been intended as such, but I must say that that is certainly a dastardly statement to make, inasmuch as it reflects on the entire farming community in the manner in which it has been given publicity in the Press. In the Government-controlled Press there is a large heading in which it is stated that wheat was used extensively for pig feeding. Last night we were told that the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defensive Measures is worried and anxious to prevent anything that would lead to uneasiness or civil commotion in this country. Nothing could be more calculated to lead to panic or civil commotion in this country than to have it placarded in a Dublin paper that farmers were feeding wheat to pigs at a time when the people of Dublin and of other towns and cities, and of the country generally, are short of bread.

I believe that that statement was made by the Minister without proper justification. I quite agree that it would be possible to find some small quantity of wheat in the stomachs of a number of pigs throughout the country but there should be no reason to believe, and the Minister has not been able to provide any proof, and I believe that he cannot provide any proof, that the wheat that was found in the stomachs of those pigs was wheat that was suitable for milling. We must remember that it is impossible to produce wheat which is 100 per cent. suitable for milling. In the threshing and cleaning of wheat any farmer who has had any experience knows that for every barrel of wheat produced there are at least a few pounds, or perhaps a stone, of wheat that is small. When the wheat comes out from the threshing set it is mixed with wheat seeds and other waste materials, generally known as "tailings".

That wheat is not suitable for flour milling, and it is possible that a small quantity of it may have been ground for feeding pigs. It is also impossible for any veterinary inspector, I believe, to distinguish between wheat and wheat products, such as bran and pollard, when you remember that most pigs that are killed at factories are not fed for at least 12 hours before being killed and, therefore, the food in their stomachs has been somewhat digested. Therefore, I say that there was no justification for the Minister's statement; neither was there justification for the wide publicity which was given to that statement in the Government newspaper and which would reflect discredit on the farmers and tend to inflame public opinion in our towns and cities against the agricultural community.

The farming community have a difficult task to face and I do not agree for one moment with Deputy Dillon that the farmers are making plenty of money out of this war. I do not know of any product of agriculture which, at the present time, leaves a margin of profit. At present cattle are much the same price as last year, and as far as tillage produce is concerned it takes every shilling the farmer gets for his crop to cover the cost of production and save him from loss. Neither do I agree with Deputy Dillon that the prices of cereals should be allowed to fluctuate according to the law of supply and demand. Deputy Dillon is probably the last surviving supporter of Victorian liberalism in this House and I believe he will fight for that policy to the last, but that policy is as dead as Queen Victoria, and the only sound agricultural policy for this country is a planned one, under which prices are based on the costs of production and fixed regardless of what prices may be in world markets. That is the policy which the Minister must make up his mind to face in future.

I referred to the reduction in the price of pigs. The Minister stated that that reduction was because of what would be a criminal offence on the part of farmers. That is no justification for some farmers and no justification whatever for a reduction in price. The price should be based on what would be necessary to cover the farmer's cost of production and enable him to continue and provide at least for the needs of the Irish people in bacon. If the policy of making indiscriminate and irresponsible reductions in the price of pigs is continued, there will be no pig industry here, and in the near future we will have to face a shortage of bacon as acute as the present shortage of flour and bread.

The shortage of bread and flour is due, in the first place, to the failure of the Government to use all the cereals produced here for human consumption, the failure to keep control at least over the supplies of those cereals which were put into the markets and which were in the hands of the merchants and, therefore, under the control of the Department of Agriculture last autumn. In addition to that, we could have secured a much larger acreage of wheat if a decent and reasonable price had been offered for it. The Government have been warned again and again that the price of wheat should at least cover the cost of production. There has been not only last year, but during the present sowing season, a complete failure on the part of the Minister to provide a reasonable price for wheat, with the result that three or four months of the wheat growing season was lost before the Department decided to increase the price to 50/-.

Next year's wheat growing season will begin in September and I hope that, before then, the Minister and his advisers will sit down and consider carefully a reasonable price for wheat, so as to ensure that it will be possible for farmers to produce 100 per cent. of our wheat requirements here. There has been no reasonable attempt, as far as I can see, on the part of the Minister, to plan for the future of agriculture. His policy seems to be to drift from one difficulty to another, and when a difficulty becomes too acute to improvise some stopgap arrangement to carry him over that particular difficulty. If we had careful planning of all our food needs, and of all our needs in commodities which could be produced here, we would not have the shortages which we have at the present time.

We have, or are believed to have, 11,500,000 acres of arable land. As far as I can gather from statistics, the total acreage under tillage, under the hay crop and under pasture is 11,576,000 acres. We hear it stated frequently that that is the area of our arable land. Any reasonable man must realise that a large part of our pasture land is not arable and, therefore, our total of arable land is much below the 11,500,000 figure—it may be at least 2,000,000 acres below that. Surely it is time that an intensive survey of our agricultural land be made. It should be made during the coming summer, and it would enable the Department to check up on the statistics which have been given in regard to acreages under the various crops and which never have been reliable. Last year they were found to be very unreliable and had to be revised and greatly reduced after three or four months. During the coming summer, the Department should undertake such an intensive survey, either through the Gárda Síochána or some auxiliary force at their disposal. That would give some idea of the total area of arable land. You cannot plan to provide for all our needs in food supplies unless you have some idea of the area of arable land. Such a survey would also act as a check up on the acreage under various crops and would be of immense value to the Department.

I have also suggested frequently that there should be undertaken, by the Department, a careful inquiry and investigation into costs of production. That never has been done. The Department has no idea whatever of the costs of production in any branch of agriculture and for that reason they can claim, in many cases, without any knowledge whatever, that the farmer is getting a reasonable price for his product, and there is no means of checking whether the farmer's claim for a higher price is reasonable or otherwise. If the Department had demonstration farms in every county, of varying sizes, and worked on ordinary commercial lines as they are worked by farmers, they would be able to check up on the farmer's claims. I believe we have reached a time when the whole standard of agricultural prices must be centrally controlled and fixed and when the law of supply and demand so enthusiastically supported by Deputy Dillon must be scrapped.

Deputy Dillon suggested that oats and barley prices should be allowed to soar high above the price of wheat. That would be altogether unworkable, for the simple reason that, if oats and barley were worth far more than wheat, it would be impossible to prevent wheat from being used for animal feeding and it would be impossible also to get the necessary production and acreage of wheat.

I am afraid that in the attempt to defend the Government position, regardless of the true facts of the situation, there has not been even consultation between the Minister and his Department. He stated last night that wheat was being fed extensively to pigs. That statement is in direct contradiction of a statement made by the Secretary of the Department in Carlow a few months ago, in which he said that he was satisfied that wheat was not being used for stock feeding. It is an extraordinary thing to find the Minister and the Secretary of the Department at variance in such a matter, and it is a question that they should settle between themselves, before they allow farmers to be put in the wrong in the Press throughout the length and breadth of the country. We know that doctors sometimes differ and that patients die, but in this case it is the patient pig industry which is in grave danger of dying as a result of the present policy. I am asking the Minister now to shake up the present attitude of improvisation and to plan a comprehensive policy for agriculture, a policy which will ensure that this country will produce all its essential requirements, both tillage produce and animal produce, and that producers will get a reasonable margin of profit.

In the dairying industry we have this position, that producers are not getting a reasonable margin of profit. Nobody dare suggest that milk can be produced at 6d. per gallon. It is a reasonable demand on the part of those engaged in dairying that the Department should take steps to ensure that the price of milk is raised at least to 9d. per gallon. Nobody wants to have butter priced so that it would be beyond the reach of the consumers, particularly the poor, but for years we have had to subsidise butter exports. We have been providing cheap butter for the people of Great Britain and other countries. Surely if that was considered to be a sound policy in the past, now that we have very little butter to export, and that we require almost all we can produce for home consumption, we should treat the home consumers as generously as we treated foreign consumers. If a subsidy is required so that butter can be sold at a price below that at which it is possible for farmers to produce it economically, then I think that subsidy should be forthcoming as freely as it was in the case of exported butter.

The same argument might be used in connection with potatoes. We know that the potato crop is the one crop that is more than any other adapted to our climate. The position for years past has been that those who produce potatoes have not got a reasonable return for their labour. There is no more expensive crop to produce, because potatoes require more human labour than other crops both to grow and also to harvest. No crop gives a larger return in the way of food per acre. For these reasons, and because it would, to a great extent, relieve unemployment, increase the output of food, and provide a stand-by in case there was a failure of cereal crops, I do not see why we should not follow the example of Great Britain by subsidising potato growing. I understand that in Great Britain a subsidy of £10 per acre is being paid for the production of potatoes. If that amount was considered to be too high a reasonable subsidy should be paid, to ensure the greatest possible acreage, and so that those who undertake production, mainly farmers with land that is not very fertile, would receive a reasonable return for their work.

Only once, as far as I know, did the Minister for Agriculture endeavour to outline a policy for the future of agriculture. His speeches in the Dáil consist usually of references to various minor and major difficulties which press upon his Department, but during the past few months he made an attempt to give his opinion as to what constitutes a sound agricultural policy for the future. He did so at a lecture delivered in Cork, and if we are to take his views there as indicating his general outlook regarding the future of agriculture, we need not be surprised at his failure to face the problems which confronted him. His outlook for agriculture was one of complete despair. He could see no possibility of any increase in the output of the dairying industry or of pig production, and neither could he see any hope for an increase in the number of people engaged in the agricultural industry. That is a policy of complete despair.

Dr. Ryan

Naturally it is if a one-sided view is taken.

Mr. Cogan

I do not see any other view that could be taken of the policy which results in a steady decline in the number of people engaged in the agricultural industry and in the output of that industry. I cannot take any view of that statement, but that is a policy of despair. I cannot accept that policy. I think the output of the agricultural industry can be increased even though external markets may decline.

Dr. Ryan

I said that the output could be increased, but the Deputy only wants to quote part of the speech. That is the trouble.

Mr. Cogan

The Minister also stated that the number of people employed in the agricultural industry could not be increased. He cited the case of New Zealand, a country that is in competition with Ireland in the British markets, where the farms are larger and where there is a higher output per man in the industry. I do not think that the policy of following the example of New Zealand or of any other country should be a guiding light for our Department of Agriculture. We must remember that this is Ireland, that our problems are purely Irish problems, and that we must face them in an Irish way. I believe that the number of people employed in the agricultural industry can be enormously increased, provided, first of all, that there is a general increase in the prices paid to farmers for their produce; and, secondly, an increase in the purchasing power of the working population. If small farmers, large farmers, labourers and workers in the towns have their purchasing power increased it will be possible to increase the amount of agricultural produce consumed. As far as external prices are concerned, we have only to be guided by the amount of goods which we can obtain for whatever quantity of goods we have to export. From the national point of view, the price of exported goods does not matter, provided we can import reasonable quantities of the goods we require in exchange. That should be the guiding policy of the Minister in regard to agriculture. If he pursues that policy he will, I believe, get away from the counsel of despair by which he seems to be guided at present.

I should like to draw the Minister's attention to another sidelight of the rural problem facing this country. I have made a survey of one townland with which I am familiar, in which there are 15 families. Between them they own 900 acres of land, and on these 900 acres there are 45 people, or an average of three in each of the 15 families. The size of the farms would be about 60 statute acres. Of the 45 people, 31 are unmarried, 26 being over 30 years of age, four under 16 years, and one between 16 and 30. That is the position in one rural townland, and it shows the decay into which rural Ireland is sinking. A number of these families are dying out, simply because economic conditions have made it impossible for farmers either to purchase land or homes for their sons, or to provide fortunes for their daughters. What is true of that particular townland is typical of rural Ireland generally, and that is a problem that the Minister for Agriculture should take into consideration.

Mr. J. Flynn

Speaking generally, and on behalf of the people in the congested districts, I say that they appreciate the difficulties that are facing the country. They are grateful for the assistance given them by the Department in the various schemes, and particularly in the allocation of seeds. However, I want to point out that by reason of the recent crisis in the flour position many people were compelled to use not alone surplus potatoes but in some cases the seed potatoes which were allocated to them by the Department, by the parish councils and by other sources. In view of that position I appeal again to the Minister to revive these special agricultural schemes in congested districts. I admit that in 1941-42, for special agricultural schemes in these districts £47,000 was allocated, but only £43,000 is provided this year for the purchase of seeds. In my opinion the allocation should be the other way round, and there should be a substantial increase in the amount to purchase seeds this year. Even at this late period I suggest, in view of the situation that has arisen, that it might be necessary for the officials of the Department to have it reviewed with a view to making a second allocation of seed potatoes and seed oats. In two areas in Kerry, particularly in Glencar and Glenbeigh, while the people appreciate what has been done for them by the Department, in view of the unforeseen circumstances that arose, I hope the Minister will assist the people by considering the suggestion I have made.

Something can also be said about the price of milk. Speaking as a farmer, and on behalf of farmers who have approached me on the matter, I think there is something in the statement that even if the price of milk indirectly raises the price of butter to the consumer, there is a case for subsidisation. What I mean is that if, as Deputy Cogan and other Deputies have pointed out, we subsidise butter on the British market, I think we are also entitled to suggest for the benefit of our own consumers and the producers of milk that butter should be subsidised on the home market so as to make it available for internal consumption. The point can be made, of course, that it may be difficult to control and adjust. In view of the Minister's statement last night that he did not expect we would have a very great quantity of butter to export, and that the trade in it for the coming year would be largely an internal one, I think we should deal with the position in the way I suggest.

We have reached the stage when we must all admit that our farmers are in a very difficult position and are entitled to a higher price for their milk than 6d. per gallon. It is necessary, I believe, to give them a higher price in order to safeguard the position of workers and of others who indirectly, at least, will be compelled to pay that higher price. The State, I suggest, should come in and adjust its economy so as to benefit one section of the community and safeguard the other. I make that suggestion in all sincerity and as one who would be very slow to encourage Ministers or Departments to be extravagant to one section of the community to the detriment of another. I think, however, that a very good case has been made for this, and I am of the opinion that the Minister would be doing a great service to the country, to the farmers and to all concerned if he would meet the situation in the way I have indicated.

Mr. Linehan

Listening to Deputy Flynn and to what he said about the price of milk and of the necessity for a subsidy, one would imagine that the price which the farmers have been receiving for their milk every year up to the last few months paid them. Deputy Flynn spoke as if he were amazed to learn that 6d. a gallon was not paying the producers. The actual position is that that cry has been heard almost as long as one can remember. In fact the poor price that farmers have been receiving for their milk gives an answer to the question asked here to-day as to why farmers are not more interested in the cow testing associations. The main reason for that is the poor price they have been receiving for their milk. The organisers and the inspectors of the cow testing associations, and the members of the Irish Dairy Shorthorn Breeders' Society, could have told that to the Deputies who have been asking why farmers are not more interested in cow testing. In nine cases out of ten the reason is the poor price paid for milk.

Early this month I addressed a letter to the Minister for Agriculture, enclosing copies of two letters received from two of the largest seed exporting firms in England. I hope he will deal with the matter when replying. The position in regard to root seeds appears to be an extraordinary one. This country is in a desperate position, due to the fact that the British Government are preventing those firms from exporting seeds to it. Both firms have a surplus supply of seeds, and we are facing the position in which we have practically none.

One firm states definitely that it has surplus stock of seeds for export. This, again, is not a new problem. The same thing happened last year. Very late in the season some seeds were released, but not to the same extent as in the previous year. Some of the seeds arrived so late that they were taken into stock, and that explains why we had any at all at the beginning of this year. I asked the Minister last year if he had done anything in the way of getting permission from the British Government to allow those two firms to export their surplus supply of seeds to us. We have exactly the same position this year as we had last year. The surplus seeds those firms have on hands are of no earthly use to them, and yet they will not be allowed to export them. It is an extraordinary position if some arrangement cannot be come to between the two Governments to enable us to get the seeds which we need so badly. It is very hard to understand the attitude of the British Government. I hope the Minister will be able, even at this late hour, to give some indication that it may be possible to get permission from the British Government to enable those firms to export seeds to us. There is the strongest evidence available that the seeds are there and that the firms will not be allowed to export them. The firms in question have written to that effect to some of their principal customers here. Steps ought to be taken to get over the difficulty at the earliest possible moment.

Much has been said about the black market in oats and barley. The Minister, under the operation of his Cereals Price Order, 1941, has been responsible for the most extraordinary system of prosecution as regards black marketing that anyone could devise. Every other day we read in the newspapers of small shopkeepers being prosecuted for selling tea or sugar at sums in excess of the fixed price. Some of them have been fined and others sent to prison. Last year, when the maize situation collapsed completely and when no other feeding stuffs were available, a number of people in West Cork and in North Cork, who had a large number of store pigs on hands, went into East Cork and bought barley. The fixed price for it was 28/- a barrel, but those people paid 32/- and 33/- to the farmers in East Cork for it. Undoubtedly, under the Cereals Order, they committed an offence by doing so. The people who sold the barley at the excess price also, of course, committed an offence.

The common procedure in connection with prosecutions for black marketing activities is to prosecute the person who sells the commodity. The Department of Agriculture, however, adopts different tactics. They prosecute the buyers. At the period I speak of, in August or September of last year, the farmers in West Cork and in North Cork, in order to get barley to keep their livestock alive and to get them ready to produce more food, went into East Cork and paid 2/- and 3/- a barrel more than the fixed price for the barley they needed. They were prosecuted and fined in varying sums from £5 to £100. We had the glorious spectacle of the people who received the excess price going into court as witnesses for the State to prove that they themselves had, in fact, committed an offence under the Order by taking the excess price and getting off scot free.

I am not saying whether or not 28/- a barrel was enough, but if there was any justice in it why should the man who paid the 2/- or the 3/- extra for the barley, because he urgently needed it, be prosecuted, and the man who sold it and put the excess money in his pocket be allowed to go scot free? There is only one explanation, and it is an obvious one, that without the co-operation of the people who got the excess price and put the swag in their pockets, the Department of Agriculture could not have got a conviction against the others. It looks to me as if there was very definite collusion between the Department of Agriculture and people who, themselves, had committed an offence by charging the excess price. Apparently, what was put up to them was that if they were prepared to go into court and swear that they were paid more than the 28/- a barrel they would not be prosecuted.

From what I know of those people, if they felt that there was the slighest danger they would be prosecuted—if they had not the most definite assurances that they would not be prosecuted—I am sure they were cute enough to know that they need not give evidence and were not bound to say anything which might lead to a prosecution against themselves in the future. I feel certain some of them were told that they need not give evidence, and yet they volunteered to go into the witness-box and admit that they received the excess price. It does not matter what the price was, whether it was too low or too big. As far as the administration of this Order is concerned, the position appears to be that the man who pays the excess price will be prosecuted, while the man who receives it will get off scot free, provided he gives information to a Civic Guard or to an inspector from the Department, and is then prepared to go into the witness-box and give evidence against the person who pays the excess price.

I think it was a most extraordinary situation. It was a scandalous situation because, after the closest investigation of all these cases, the district justice who convicted and imposed the fine said that he was absolutely satisfied that in none of the cases was there any evidence of buying the barley for resale or for the purpose of making a quick profit out of it; he was absolutely satisfied that in everyone of the cases the people had to buy the barley because they had been left at that particular period with no feeding for pigs and they had to get barley or else slaughter their pigs in an unfit condition.

It is extraordinary to have one Department prosecuting the person who sells over the fixed price and not prosecuting the buyer and another Department prosecuting the buyer and not prosecuting the person who sells. These prosecutions did not do any good and certainly did not help to teach the people any extraordinary respect for these particular orders. It was perfectly plain to everybody that the reason the sellers were not prosecuted was the fact that they got immunity from the State because they gave evidence. If there was any redress at all, if the unfortunate man who paid the couple of shillings in excess per barrel and who was fined £50, could recover the excess back from them there would be some justice in it, but he could not because the whole transaction was an illegal one and he could not recover, civilly or otherwise. If there are further prosecutions of that sort—I hope there will not be— but if the Minister finds it necessary, where there are two people concerned in what is a criminal offence, I hope he will not adopt the tactics of putting one of the parties to the crime into the witness box to give evidence and then letting him go scot free. Such prosecutions will not do the administration of justice or the Department any good in this country.

There is one other matter about prosecutions to which I would like to refer. The night before last I was informed—and I regret I cannot put it any further than that to the Minister —that there was a number of prosecutions likely to take place in the area around Mallow against lorry owners who have not a road transport licence for hauling beet. Such prosecutions have taken place there in previous years because in every district you will find a number of people with privately-owned lorries, who generally draw for themselves, people who have a road transport plate and who take beet for their neighbours into the beet factory. At the instance of the railway company for the last few years they, naturally, were invariably reported by agents of the railway company and prosecuted but, surely, this year any means that could be found for taking beet into the beet factory should have been utilised, in view of the serious position of transport this past winter, whether the lorry had a particular kind of licence or not. Surely it is utterly ridiculous in these times to suggest that any lorry-owner would be prosecuted for carrying beet into the factory, simply because he has not a general transport licence under the Road Transport Act. Last year, at the instance of the Parliamentary Secretary in charge of turf production, the danger of prosecution of lorry owners who had not a transport licence was withdrawn so as to encourage these lorry owners to engage in the transport of turf. They were perfectly free to draw turf, either belonging to the person himself, if he was a dealer in coal and turf, or belonging to anybody else. There is no reason why any means of transport that could be made available for the haulage of agricultural produce should not be permitted to be used, whether a particular type of licence is ordinarily necessary or not, as long as the vehicle is taxed and insured in the ordinary way.

If the Minister can find out if, in fact, prosecutions are pending, I think the best thing he could do would be to have them stopped at once. Surely at the present time it would be ridiculous to fine a person for delivering beet to the beet factory when, possibly, he may be the only person in the district who had a couple of gallons of petrol on that particular day. It would be just as well if all this petty type of prosecutions, which merely arise under particular Acts brought into force to meet a particular situation in perfectly normal times, were dropped for the duration. If any goods can be delivered from one point to another by any kind of transport, it ought to be done without reference to whether it would be against the terms of the Road Traffic Act or the Road Transport Act or anything else.

Their general practice is to carry on whatever they take over.

Mr. Linehan

I am glad to know that. The Minister has cleared the air to some extent. I will give the Minister the facts. The board took over four or five creameries in some of which there was no trading going on for a long time, for reasons well known to the Minister—they had gone bankrupt. For the first year under the board that trading was dropped completely, but now they have gone back to it. I think some Kerry Deputies would not be as anxious as they were to get the big central erection put up in Rathmore if they thought that that was going to happen. I am surprised that some of them did not bring it to the Minister's notice. It is very unfair to permit an organisation which has not to bear any of the capital or normal expenditure in business to compete with people who have to pay income-tax and the ordinary expenditure of traders. I admit that a co-operative creamery is entitled to engage in this form of trading because people invested money in that creamery out of their own resources, but I do not believe that anyone would attempt to justify the carrying on of private trading by the Dairy Disposals Board.

Mr. Bennett

The ordinary Deputy, not particularly interested in agriculture, would perhaps derive some satisfaction from observing the decrease in this Vote which amounts to some £451,000. We all know why that decrease is taking place and we are glad that the calamity which caused such a huge expenditure last year does not necessitate a similar expenditure this year. I am rather sorry, however, that the Minister, having succeeded in inducing the Executive to give him £451,000 additional last year, did not persuade them to leave him a similar amount to expend this year, as we certainly would make several suggestions as to the directions in which he might expend it. I myself could make two or three suggestions in the course of my speech. One does not want to say anything that might be construed as endangering the position in regard to our food supply, and I hope that anything I have to say will not be interpreted as having any such object. Last year, we had, I think, some 470,000 odd acres of wheat. I am not so sure that there has been any advance on that acreage this year. For various reasons, in many counties some difficulty was experienced in putting in spring wheat in the last three or four weeks. I am afraid the quantity of wheat put in will fall short of what it would have been if the farmers were enabled to put their full effort into the work, in other words, if we had not such inclement weather for the past few weeks. I have no doubt that they will make all possible efforts to increase the acreage under wheat during the remaining weeks of this month. I am sorry to say that a good deal of the winter wheat sown early on in my district appears to be in a very bad condition at the moment. I am rather afraid that some of the land will have to be re-seeded. That, in itself, will present a difficulty for the farmers concerned, because it is not at all clear that sufficient seed to re-sow these areas will be available.

The Minister in referring to the seed position said that the position was fairly satisfactory, that there was a sufficiency of winter wheat. I believe there was and I hope there will also be a sufficiency of spring wheat. In relation to barley, the Minister said that there was enough seed in the country, and he also stated that we had sufficient seed oats. I do not know, nor do I think that the Minister or any official in the Department knows, that we have sufficient oats. Possibly there is but the difficulty is to procure it. It was unfortunate, as several Deputies pointed out, that the Minister made an Order fixing a maximum price for oats. Therein, I think, lies an explanation of the difficulties about which several Deputies have spoken in relation to the supply of seed oats and to the provision of oatmeal for the making of porridge. I believe that if the Order fixing a maximum price had not been made, the millers would have been able to get not only sufficient oats to make the necessary oatmeal for human consumption but a quantity over and above that.

The position at the moment is that there is a black market in oats. We all foresaw the difficulties seven or eight months ago when the Minister fixed, as well as a minimum, a maximum price. Immediately there was a black market in oats. Farmers would not sell at the price fixed because they could not buy at anything like the same price any substitute food stuff. The millers, on the other hand, could not purchase oats at a price that would enable them to sell the milled product at a reasonable profit. Some of them who attempted in the early stages to pay a very small amount in addition to the maximum price of 1/4 a stone or 18/6 a barrel, had their oats commandeered.

It is a long way from the 18/6 per barrel fixed by the Minister in the early stages to the price which has to be paid for oats now. The Minister has since fixed a price, I think, of 31/3 per barrel, but there is not a grain of oats in any corn dealer's store in the country. I know several farmers who searched Cork, Dublin, Limerick and many other towns but they could not get a grain of seed oats because it is not there. How could it be there? The merchants are supposed to sell it to the farmers at 31/6 but they cannot possibly purchase it themselves at that price. Neither can the manufacturers of oatmeal purchase at that price.

The position in this country at the moment is that while we are asked to till our land, having already put in the amount of wheat which our land can carry, we are compelled to break the law in order to obtain the necessary seed oats to complete our tillage quotas. The fact is that many farmers have to become criminals to grow oats. They are compelled to go into the black market to get seed oats. I have had to go into it myself. I paid, not 31/-, 35/-, nor 40/-, but much beyond 40/- to get seed oats and I had to search the Six Counties to get it. Yet according to the regulations made by the Minister I am a criminal. I have committed a crime by paying beyond the maximum price for oats. I do not know whether the Minister in his heart desires that I should leave my land uncultivated rather than become a breaker of the laws of the State by paying these prices for seed oats.

My own conscience is clear in the matter anyhow. I do not know whether it is a dangerous headline to set up in this law-abiding country, but I would ask the Minister in the coming year—and now is the time we have to consider measures for the next season —to take some steps to prevent a recurrence of these happenings. I suggest that the remedy is obvious. The Minister was afraid, some months ago, that if he abolished the maximum price the result would be that farmers would all grow oats instead of wheat. I do not believe there was any danger of that, because most farmers will grow the crop that suits their land. In the past, where they could they grew wheat, and where they could not grow wheat they grew some other crop. I remember when the Minister came to my county and asked our co-operation in the campaign to grow more food, we gave it to him to the best of our ability. I move to report progress.

Progress reported. Committee to sit again.

Dáil Éireann díospóireacht - Thursday, 16 Apr 1942

Committee on Finance. - Vote 30—Agriculture (Resumed).

Mr. Brodrick

Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 16 Apr 1942