asked the Minister for Agriculture if he will state when it is expected that the fertiliser vouchers issued in respect of the 1945, 1946 and 1947 harvests will be recalled.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Fertiliser Vouchers.
It is expected to recall the fertiliser dockets issued in respect of wheat of the 1945 harvest about the end of July next. It has not yet been decided when the dockets issued in respect of the 1946 and 1947 harvest will be recalled.
Will the Minister state whether it is possible to give any indication of how long more farmers will have to wait before these dockets are redeemed? Does he not agree that to have to wait four years for the redemption of these dockets imposes an unnecessary inconvenience upon farmers? Will he say now whether the supply of fertilisers, which he has been urging farmers so strenuously in his numerous announcements to put into their lands, does not permit him to have the fertiliser vouchers redeemed and, if it is not the case that it is lack of fertilisers that is holding up the redemption of these vouchers, will he state to the Dáil what exactly is the cause of the delay?
The obligation to liquidate one more idiotic Fianna Fáil scheme. I am furnished with five years' dockets which I can employ a staff to liquidate in one year and then sack them all at the end of that year, having disrupted the whole work of the Department of Agriculture, or I can employ a staff and keep them constantly at work liquidating these dockets at the rate of about one half-year's issue in every given year. It seems to me to be more in accordance with reason and common sense that a staff should be permitted to work in a coherent and efficient way to liquidate this further imbecility of my predecessor's Government than that I should dislocate the Department's work in order to do in one 12 months what can be done without serious injury to anybody over a period of three and a half years.
Is this the amount of satisfaction that is to be given to farmers who utilised the fertility of their farms all through the emergency period in order to grow wheat to enable bread to be given to the Irish people? Is this the satisfaction they are to get from the Minister, that they are to be told that because of staffing difficulties he is not in a position to redeem these vouchers? Is it not the position that the Minister has been trumpeting about the country for the past year and a half about the necessity for fertilisers and about the additional supplies of fertilisers which he was getting from foreign countries? Does he not agree that these farmers are entitled to more consideration than he seems to be prepared to give them?
The Deputy is probably aware that the vouchers are being recalled and are being encashed with the maximum expedition and, inasmuch as the amount outstanding is 2/6 per barrel, I cannot imagine that farmers who require fertilisers for their soil are rendered incapable of getting them simply because they have to wait three months longer in order to encash the dockets than if I employed staff sufficient to do the whole job in one year, and I am quite satisfied that the most expeditious service I can give the people entitled to these dockets is to do it in the way it is at present being done.