This is not an Estimate upon which there can be much political or Party strife. The ex-Minister for Lands set a good example in approaching this Estimate in a very constructive way. This is the Estimate, above all others, in regard to which we should think in terms of construction, reconstruction and future development. It is well that the Minister has made a fairly comprehensive survey of all the plantable land in the Twenty-Six Counties. While it may not be complete in detail, that survey gives a general idea of the amount of land that is capable of being planted and the amount of land that we should aim at planting in the shortest possible time.
We all know the difficulties that must be faced. First of all, there is the difficulty of acquisition. All land belongs to somebody. There is not a piece of land in the Twenty-Six Counties to which somebody does not claim ownership. It has not been the policy of the Department in the past and it is not their policy at present or for the future to acquire land compulsorily. The general aim is to secure agreement on the part of the owners for the acquisition of land for planting by the Forestry Department. Practically all of the land that is suitable for planting is of very low agricultural value. Many people might claim that equal benefits would be conferred upon the nation by using this land for rough grazing for sheep, but the general consensus of opinion now is that the return from afforestation, if it is properly planted, would be greater. The margin is not very wide between the two types of production but the balance is certainly in favour of afforestation.
It would be a good idea if the Minister would give us, when he is replying, fairly exact figures of the actual cost of planting an average acre of suitable land and the period of time which it would take before that crop of timber would be completely harvested, and the gross value of that timber when marketed. We would then see exactly in terms of pounds, shillings and pence the annual profit to the nation from afforestation. I know that this is not a work the value of which can be assessed exactly in terms of pounds, shillings and pence. I know that there is advantage by way of improvement in climate and general agricultural conditions by the provision of shelter belts on hills and waste land. Therefore, while afforestation has all those advantages, in addition it would be no harm for us to know, as ordinary business people, the actual value in money of the acreage which it is required to plant.
The Minister has estimated that there are 1,200,000 acres suitable for planting. I take it that that estimate is, in most cases, of waste land on hillsides, land above a certain altitude. We all know also that we have a fairly large acreage of land which is wet or waterlogged, cutaway bog and the type of land which, while it may be drainable, is not dry land at present. The Minister may have to decide with the Minister for Agriculture whether this type of land should be reclaimed for agriculture or for afforestation purposes. I think the Minister will agree with me that the cost of reclaiming this land for agricultural purposes would be immeasurably greater than the cost of reclaiming it for forestry purposes. I have inspected land which was drained under the rehabilitation scheme in County Wicklow. It was not very low-lying, but it was wettish land, nevertheless. It had been drained at enormous expense by the Department of Agriculture, and I was wondering whether it might not be more advantageous to have planted that land. It would only require a few open drains instead of the covered drains required to make it into agricultural land. It is a matter on which we must have very expert advice as to whether we can find suitable commercial timber which will grow on that type of land and be of real value to the country.
When we consider that we are setting out to plant large areas of forest, upwards of 1,000,000 acres, in the shortest space of time which is humanly possible having regard to all the difficulties and obstacles that must be overcome, we must remember that we are setting out to maintain a permanent productive organisation, the Forestry Department. For that reason we must give very considerable attention to the personnel of that organisation and in my opinion the key-men in the Forestry Department are trained foresters who are for the most part young men who have entered the service. I have met quite a number of them and they are men whom anybody would be proud to meet, men keen on their work and zealous to forward the work of planting. They are men who have acquired a good education and a good technical training and they have entered the service by the ordinary method of competitive examination. Then they do a course of training in the forestry school and after that they are sent out to do this important work throughout the country. Each forester has under his charge a considerable area of land and a considerable number of men and he has very heavy responsibilities to carry. On him depend the things which were mentioned by Deputy Dunne and Deputy Pattison, that is, the good relations between the ordinary workers and the Department. On those men depend to a great extent the amount of work which is done and the efficiency with which it is carried out. Generally speaking I think that the average Irish worker is a good worker and all he requires is capable and efficient leadership. If he is given that he will give a good return, probably a better return than workers in any other country in the world. It is these foresters who give that leadership and supervision to the ordinary worker. I am told that each forester has to control the expenditure of £5,000 a year which is a fairly substantial responsibility on a young man. He has to prepare the whole programme of work within his unit, prepare estimates of labour and expenditure, supervise and pay staff and look after sales of firewood and other forestry produce. In addition to that, I understand, each forester is responsible for his area at all times. Like a good police officer he is never off duty.
In the case of fire or any other damage to the plantation he must be on the spot to deal with it, and that is also a substantial responsibility. It is responsibility that should carry with it not only fair remuneration but also a certain measure of security, but I understand that foresters are not established officers of the Forestry Department. They are simply temporary officers working from year to year without established pension rights. When we have made up our minds that afforestation will go on for years, and that it will be productive, and that when we reach the 1,000,000 acres we have in mind, probably many more acres will come on the market to be dealt with and replanted, we can look on the work as permanent national work that will go on indefinitely. For that reason if any civil servant should be established and have pension rights these men who control and supervise afforestation should have these conditions. I understand that men in the same classification in Britain, and even in Northern Ireland, are established officers. Another point is that more than any other civil servant they actually produce the means to pay their pensions in visible physical assets. Each forester controls and plants about 100 acres per year, and by the time a young man starting on that work reaches pension age, the produce of his area and of his years of work will be coming on the market.
I want also to support the case made with regard to the ordinary forestry workers. They are engaged in a difficult, strenuous work. I have been a manual worker for most of my years, and will not acknowledge that there is any undue hardship in manual work in the open air. It is strenuous work, work for a hardy, healthy man, but it has many advantages in addition to the disadvantages. Many of the disadvantages could be overcome by care and thought on the part of those in charge. To begin with, the forestry workers have to travel a long distance to their work. The permanent solution of that problem is to bring the workers' houses nearer to the work. In his introductory statement, the Minister said the Department is planning the building of houses for the forestry workers. That should be pushed forward. It may be said it is the duty of local authorities, but there is a special duty on the Forestry Department to provide housing accommodation for its workers. They have the land and they know exactly where the men are required. In ordinary housing development, a man applies for a house in a certain place, and in due course it is built for him on that site. That is a haphazard way of dealing with this problem. The Forestry Department require a certain number of men in a certain area, and it is their duty, in addition to planting trees, to plant the workers convenient to the work.
I could give instances of that. In County Wicklow, in the great valley of Aughavannagh, there is a very sparse population at present, yet there are, I suppose, thousands of acres of plantation all around. That would be an ideal site for a model village for forestry workers built by the Forestry Department. It is not enough to build a house here and there. If you bring the workers nearer the work you must provide some of the ordinary amenities which a worker enjoys in the smallest villages and towns. You must build a group of houses where they would have the usual amenities of any established village, and the Minister should be thinking along those lines. It is wholly undesirable to denude large portions of the country of the human population in order to achieve the ideal of afforestation. If you remove smallholders who own the mountain lands, you must replace them by some other type of worker, and the only type you can put there is the forestry worker. For that reason, the Minister should push very hard to secure the erection by his Department of suitable housing for those workers in isolated areas. That would remove some of the grievances they have in having to travel long distances.
In the same way, it should be possible to have here and there for adverse weather a few portable shelters where men could take cover in case of really severe weather during their work. Also, in the very cold or wet weather, these shelters would be useful for men taking their midday meal. Small comforts of that kind supplied to the men thoughtfully would go a long way to win their wholehearted confidence and make them feel that the Forestry Department was not a cold, impersonal machine, determined to extract the maximum from the men and give the minimum in exchange.
As a manual worker accustomed to working in the fields, I had a certain amount of sympathy with Deputy Dunne when he mentioned the question of an evening meal. We all know that matter might not receive very sympathetic consideration from the ordinary higher civil servant who thinks in terms of working from 9 to 5 and going home to his evening meal. The forestry worker continues on some days to 6 p.m. and then may have to travel a considerable distance home. That means that from 1 p.m. till 7 p.m. there would be no refreshment of any kind. That is an unduly long period. Everyone knows the kind of appetite you can acquire when working on an open hillside. That problem needs to be thoughtfully and sympathetically considered. No one suggests there should be a long break in which men would go away to cook a meal, as that would mean too great a loss of time. It should be possible to provide a small, light evening tea which would be very much appreciated. There may be difficulties, but I am sure the Minister would find ways of getting over them. These are small matters, but they would create between the men working on the hills and the Department that spirit of co-operation and goodwill which is essential to work of national development.
I hope the legislation we enacted this year for the acquisition of land will help the Minister, particularly in the case of mixed farms where there is a considerable amount suitable for agriculture and a considerable amount suitable for afforestation. I had personal experience of a fairly large farm offered to the Department and which they were anxious to acquire but, because it was more than 50 per cent. agricultural land, they could not acquire it at the ordinary price payable for forestry land. They had to wait for the Land Commission to decide to acquire that particular holding, and in the course of the departmental delays the owner of the farm found a better buyer and sold the land, with the result that the Forestry Department was at the loss of it. If some means could be found to speed up the acquisition of such holdings, it would be possible for the Forestry Department to utilise to great advantage more than half of such a holding. Furthermore, the Land Commission could utilise the other half for their purposes, for the relief of congestion or the provision of holdings for migrants. These delays should be overcome. It is very difficult to find a holding which does not contain some agricultural land. There should be some departmental method of getting over the difficulty of having to acquire agricultural land, in addition to mountain land, and to rearrange that as between the Forestry Division and the Land Commission proper with a view to utilising portion for the provision of exchange holdings for those who are giving up their land for planting.
Provision is made in the Estimate for the grant of a sum of £10 to farmers who plant trees on their own lands. The Minister would not appear to be very optimistic in this particular direction since the amount he has set aside for that purpose is very small. I do not think he has any reason to be optimistic. I do not think farmers at the moment have any desire to avail of these grants to any considerable extent. One reason why the grants are not availed of to the extent the Minister would like is that they are too small to permit of the land planted being properly fenced; £10 will only go a very small distance towards fencing. I do not ask the Minister to increase the grant but I do suggest to him that he should introduce a loan scheme under which the farmer would be paid the full cost of both planting and fencing. The loan could be made a charge on the actual acreage of trees planted. It should not be repayable in yearly instalments. It should be repayable when the trees mature. I think a good many farmers would avail of such a scheme. They would have the pleasure of seeing their farms improved with plantations and proper fences. The value of the farm would be enhanced. The farmer might not himself reap the benefit since the trees would be mortgaged to the Department of Lands but he would own the land upon which the trees grew, and he would have some scenic addition to his farm. If, at the end of the time it took the trees to reach maturity, there was any surplus, that surplus would go to the farmer. At any time he could, of course, repay the mortgage and do what he liked with the timber. I think a scheme along those lines would result in a much larger area being planted.
It may be said that there would be little use in asking a farmer to undertake this work on a large scale without expert advice and instruction. I understand that a large number of additional agricultural instructors are about to be appointed. Surely these could be given a course in afforestation so that they would be competent to advise farmers in the future. A great deal of valuable work could be done under such a scheme. Deputy O'Grady pointed out that if 20,000 farmers planted half an acre each a considerable acreage of afforestation could be achieved. I think that is a rather modest estimate. I can quite visualise 100,000 acres planted under a scheme such as I have outlined, over the next five or six years. It would be a valuable addition to the work being done by the Forestry Division itself. In most farms there are small areas which are unsuitable for agricultural purposes, but which would be quite suitable for afforestation. The support of local organisations, such as Macra na Feirme and Muintir na Tíre, could be enlisted and a tremendous amount of work could be done along the lines I have suggested. I do not think we should be disheartened because the farmers have not applied for the £10 grant to the extent that was anticipated. I think it would be a good idea to discuss this matter with the farmers themselves, and with the organisations that I have mentioned.
There is one small point I would like to raise with regard to the actual plantations already in existence. I think the divisions between the plantations are not sufficient to afford adequate protection should fire break out. I know that we have not experienced any conflagrations here to the same extent as they have been experienced on the Continent, but it might be a good idea if we took precautions in advance to check the spread of fire should a conflagration break out. We should, therefore, be on our guard in time. It would be a terrible disaster if many thousands of acres of trees were completely destroyed by reason of the fact that we might have, as we had in the past, an exceptionally dry summer. While one may talk of public opinion, civic spirit and all these things, a fire will sometimes occur accidentally without any wilful neglect on the part of anybody. It could be brought about in a variety of ways, and it would be a terrible thing if the whole community were to lose thousands of pounds' worth of valuable timber by reason of the absence of adequate precautions. Various precautions will suggest themselves to the Department, but I think wider spacing between the trees in plantations or wider passages between them would be desirable.