A question raised by many Deputies was the question of post-war famine or planning for the future. Two Deputies in particular —Deputy O'Sullivan and Deputy Childers—devoted a good deal of time and evidently had given a good deal of thought to the subject. Other Deputies referred to it, but they evidently had not given it the same amount of thought. Those Deputies who visualise an open market after the war which will take any amount of our surplus produce and at a good price, and who are impatient if you suggest anything else, are not thinking about the subject at all—they are merely hoping.
Reference was made by a number of Deputies to a speech I made in Cork some time ago. I could have gone to Cork and said that everything would be all right when the war was over, and, if I had done so, I probably would have pleased some of the Deputies opposite who take that view also. I want, however, to make this matter clear because some Deputy referred to a conflict of opinion between some other Minister and myself. It was not, I need hardly say, the considered judgment of the Government that things would go as I outlined there and I am quite sure that other Ministers would have looked at it in a different way, but I thought it well to talk about these subjects in a lecture of that kind, when I was speaking largely to an academic assembly, and to say what I thought might be the position when the war was over. I was not dogmatic and, in fact, I hope I am not right. If Deputies disagree with me and think that things may be otherwise, all I can say is that they have just as good a right to that view as I have to the views I expressed in Cork.
I agree with the Deputies who have raised this question that it is well we should try to get down to this subject, if we can. It is all very indefinite. Nobody can say what the position will be, and nobody can say what market will be there. I will, however, take one subject I dealt with in the Cork lecture, that is, dairy products. I said that we had been subsidising dairy products for the past ten years or so, all the time in the hope that matters might improve in the world market for dairy products, that we would have kept up our production in the meantime, and so be in a position, when things improved, to take our place as producer of dairy products, but that it was rather disheartening, when the war came and when the British people themselves were at war, that they should offer us a price for our dairy products which was much below the cost of production here. I said that if they did that in times of war, it was at least arguable that they might not do much better when the war was over. If they do not do much better when the war is over, and if we cannot get any foreign market, what are we going to do?
I did go on to point out that we had not a very big surplus—as a matter of fact, our surplus now is almost gone—and we might have to make some slight reduction in the number of cows here, but that reduction would be only 7 or 8 per cent. and it was not a reduction which would ruin our agriculture, but a matter which we would have to consider with a view to seeing what might be done about it. I also spoke of bacon and I propose to come back to bacon again. I do not want to repeat my speech in Cork but merely to give an instance of the type of subject I dealt with there. As I say, I dealt with these subjects only in a personal way, on the basis of whatever thought I could give to them myself, in the hope that others might also give some thought to them, and with the idea that we might be able to get down to a consideration of the subject in more detail and perhaps more intelligently as time goes on.
Some Deputies referred to that speech as the death-knell of agriculture, so far as I was concerned, a pessimistic speech and so on, but I should like to remind Deputies that, although I said there that I did not see much prospect of a big and profitable export business in dairy products or pig products, I did, on the other hand, say that the cattle trade and the egg trade would probably be all right. I agree absolutely with Deputy Fagan that the prospect for good store cattle will probably be all right. I do not see that any change as a result of this war will make a great difference in the position with regard to good store cattle. But I may be wrong in that. I may be wrong about pigs and I may be wrong also about butter. I merely give my own opinion and I am glad to hear the opinion of others.
Deputy Hickey said that the only solution I could give was a reduction of industrial wages. As an attempt at misrepresentation of a speech, the Deputy could scarcely have done much better. It is true that I did make a reference to industrial wages. I said that if things turned out as I had outlined the price of world food products would go down and that if we had to depend on a foreign market for the sale of a considerable portion of our farm produce, very naturally the price of the exported article would regulate the price at home; in other words, that if we sent out butter at a low price, butter would be cheap here, and that if we sent out cattle at a low price, beef would be cheap here, and that if that were to occur all around, the price of food would come down to perhaps half its present price. I said that if the farmer got only half of what he is getting at the moment for what he is selling, he could not go on paying the present price for industrial products and that the only thing he could do would be to get his industrial products at half their present price. I also said—and I should like Deputy Hickey to look this up—that they could be reduced in price in three ways —by the manufacturers bringing down their prices themselves, by reducing wages, or by getting some money from the common pool, that is, the Exchequer.
