Deputy Corry gave notice that he would raise the subject matter of Questions Nos. 27 and 28 of the 22nd February, 1951.
Committee on Finance. - Adjournment Debate—Barley and Wheat Prices.
I only hope we will get the blessed man in.
There is a Minister present.
I do not want to talk to an empty bench.
There is a Minister present.
Very well. I am raising on this matter two very serious questions. I have just alluded to the first one: that is, our position with regard to wheat. In reply to a question here, the Minister told us that we had enough wheat until next September, between the quantity we had in stock and what we would import. We had then the position that the cheapest wheat that can be imported to-day is costing £31 15s. od. per ton at an Irish port, delivered c.i.f. I have that information from a most reputable miller. We are paying £31 15s. 0d. a ton to the foreigner from whom we have to borrow the dollars to buy it and we are paying £25 a ton to the Irish farmer.
I am very glad to see that the Minister has arrived. I repeat we are paying £25 per ton to the Irish farmer. That was the price guaranteed for the 1948 crop before the present Minister took up the reins of office. That works out at 62/6 per barrel. Many things have happened since that price was fixed. The cost of seed to-day is over double what it was in 1948. The cost of agricultural labour has gone up.
Who supplies the seed?
The merchants. The cost of agricultural labour has gone up; the cost of farm machinery has gone up. The cost of artificial manures has gone up by 30/- a ton in the last week.
Fifteen shillings for the 44 per cent.
The farmer has his back to the wall. He must now produce wheat at the same price at which he produced it in 1948.
And 5/- more than he got in 1947.
The same price as he produced it for in 1948 when it was fixed by the Fianna Fáil Government and guaranteed before the present Minister arrived to take office. What is the position with regard to wheat? Will the Minister give us any guarantee that if anything happens he will get priority in the markets of the world for wheat? If he cannot get priority what will the position be?
"The present most urgent need is India and it is quite likely that 2,000,000 tons of grain will be despatched to that country as a priority. It is quite likely, therefore, that there will be a temporary shortage, and possibly a long-term shortage, of foreign grain, which makes it all the more important to secure that the native wheat supplies will be ample and that they will find their way to the mills."
I would like to impress the last sentence on the Minister who is at present grinding good wheat here for pigs and selling it as white pollard. To-day the Minister was asked if he would state the country of origin of the wheat at present being milled for animal feeding, the total quantity of tons imported in 1950 and the c.i.f. price per ton and the retail price when the pollard is being sold as pollard in lots of one cwt. The reply was: "No wheat has so far been imported especially for animal feeding." So that the wheat that was brought in and that is now converted to animal feeding was brought in for human consumption. It may be something like the "sour gums" that were brought in here.
It is native Irish wheat.
It is not Argentinian.
I would like to have a very definite proof of that. Judging by native Irish barley and the stuff I showed the Minister for which he had paid £26 10s. per ton, judging by that I am very doubtful as to what kind of wheat he is getting now from abroad. It may be like the Iraquian barley or the Argentinian oats. One could crush them and practically blow them over to the Minister.
Not to speak of Argentinian wheat.
That is the stuff.
It is the stuff all right. Dear stuff! We are paying for it still.
The Minister is at present grinding wheat for animal feeding. He has not given any account of the quantity he has grown and is selling at 30/- a cwt. At the same time he tells us that he is importing maize and milo maize; that he imported 348,551 tons at £23 11s. 10d. a ton in 1950 and 64,000 tons of what he called milo maize at £21 0s. 6d. a ton. That would give an average of £22 a ton. But if the farmer wants it he will get it at £29 a ton.
I think your arithmetic is a bit agley.
I am afraid the Minister has often erred lately.
Reckon that up again now.
I am basing my arithmetic on the reply given by the Minister and a reply given by the Taoiseach. The Taoiseach's reply was that the total imports of maize in 1950 amounted to 348,501 tons at an average price of £23 11s. 10d. per ton, and 64,059 tons of milo maize at £21 0s. 6d. per ton. What is the arithmetic the Minister complains of? He says: "At present Grain Importers (Éire) Limited is supplying purchasers on the basis of 40 per cent. maize and 60 per cent. milo maize." The Minister can calculate the cost, taking 40 per cent. at £23 11s. and 60 per cent. at £21 0s. 6d. per ton.
Where did you get the £23 11s.?
The Minister can make up a little sum. He should keep his tongue quite until he gets an opportunity to answer.
Where did you get the £23 11s.?
Those are the figures.
Go fish.
Does the Minister want any other figures?
Yes.
Those are the Taoiseach's figures to-day. Perhaps the Minister has different ones. Has the Taoiseach let him down?
Get out a stump of a pencil and work it out.
The minimum quantity that Grain Importers are authorised to sell is six tons.
You are addled, Deputy.
So that the man with the pig can buy six tons of feeding for him, on the Minister's figures, at £29 per ton, carriage paid, to the purchaser's nearest railway station. That is the Minister's answer. The Minister can make it up himself. I am not concerned with that. I am more concerned with seeing that food is provided for the people for the next 12 months. I am far more interested in that side of it. I want to know from the Minister: will he increase the price of wheat in order to cover the increased cost of production or will farmers go out of wheat production, so that the long cherished dream may be realised and we may be compelled to go to other countries with our hat in our hand, if anything happens in the world, saying, "give me bread for my people and you can take my children?" It is coming to that. A very plucky attempt was made by certain Deputies not excluding the Minister anyway, from 1939 to 1947, to bring about that situation.
You did a good job of it yourself.
We were told then that there was no danger in respect of wheat, that plenty of wheat could be brought in in British bottoms to supply the Irish people, that there was no bother about getting it. Are we going to make any provision now for wheat or will the example of the Minister be followed? The Minister's example of grinding wheat and giving it out for animal feeding—is that the headline to the Irish farmer as to what he is to do with any wheat he grows next harvest? If he sells it, he will get only £25 a ton. If he buys a bag of bran or pollard he will pay 30/- for it. If he wants to buy the Minister's mixture of milo-maize he will pay 36/- for it, if it is available—I do not think it will be. Of course, he may induce the farmers in the grain-growing belt in this country to produce barley for him.
You will help me greatly.
I am prepared to help the Minister in that on the day he gives to the Irish farmer the price that he paid the nigger last year, and that is not too much to ask. The price he paid the Iraquian last year for his barley, let him pay the Irish farmer that price now. If he does not, I think he will be without it. He has told the Irish farmer to grow what he pleases. Does he think the Irish farmer who has got, through the work of the Beet Growers' Association, £28 15s. 0d. a ton for malting barley, will grow wheat at £25 a ton or Ymer barley at £20 a ton? He is not. Therefore, wheat will be the cheapest grain on the market and the temptation and the inclination will be to use the cheapest grain on the market for animal feeding. I do not wish to proceed in this strain with the Minister.
You have done bravely for the last 15 minutes.
I do not wish to do it.
No, God help you.
Will the Minister give the Irish farmer what he has to give the foreigner for wheat?
I thought it was "the nigger".
Is he going to give the Irish farmer £31 15s. 0d. a ton, which he is paying for the worst wheat imported to-day?
That includes shipping.
The gentleman from whom the Minister gets his funds, Mr. Paul E. Miller, Chief of the E.C.A. mission to Ireland, says that, since 1948, 19,000,000 dollars of the E.C.A. allocation to Ireland has been spent on wheat and wheat flour imported from the United States and Canada, and he believes that more wheat could be grown here. He is the man who has to say whether the Irish people will get wheat or do without it, and if, in his opinion, wheat can be got or wheat should be produced by the Irish people, then he is not going to give them wheat. That was stated by Mr. Miller, speaking on the work of the E.C.A. in Ireland, at Jury's Hotel, as reported in the Irish Press of 22nd February, 1951.
You need not tell us where it was reported.
We are always anxious to give all the news possible to our people and we always give them sound information. That is the position to-day. The people of this country are not prepared, on the Minister's record——
An leas-Cheann Comhairle
I assume the Deputy is anxious to hear the Minister.
I certainly am. They are not prepared, on the Minister's record, to be satisfied with the Minister's international agreement on the table instead of a loaf of bread.
The Minister for Agriculture has only ten minutes now.
It is a woeful thing to hear in this House the children of Cleopatra described as "niggers". I only hope that they know the eccentricities of our people in the choice of some of their representatives.
The policy of this Government, Sir, is to build up in this country 12 months' supply of wheat and to maintain that supply continuously. That policy would have been given effect to already but for the disgraceful condition of the storage situation which was our inheritance from the ludicrously incompetent administration which burdened this country until January, 1948. Since we have disembarrassed ourselves of that encumbrance, we have been building storage as fast as we possibly could, and, I am happy to inform the House, are steadily adding to it. So far as I know, at the present moment every available square foot of storage is being availed of; every bushel of wheat that we can find a safe place of storage for is here or is on its way here or awaiting the arrangement of freight to bring it here. Any wheat that is drawn from storage now, a corresponding amount of wheat is purchased to replenish the storage. The only effect of leaving low grade wheat in our stores would be to prevent the introduction of high grade wheat in lieu of the low grade wheat which, for the moment, we elect to use for animal feeding.
Is that the home-grown wheat?
Only a part thereof. There is rubbish grown in this country and there is medium quality wheat and good quality wheat, and if the Deputy will keep quiet for a few moments I will tell him what I propose to do about it. I think Deputy Corry will agree with me that he was good enough to call on me recently with a deputation. He put his views very strongly and I explained my position and, having canvassed the matter, I said: "Well, Deputy, you and I may agree about price level, but if you cannot recommend the crop...", and he made it clear he had no intention of doing it. I said: "Perhaps I may depend on your goodwill not to make my task more difficult by trying to persuade people not to grow wheat.""Oh," said Deputy Corry, "of course I would not do that. I must ask to be excused from going out on a campaign to get farmers to grow wheat at the price you are offering. I deplore your decision, but I will not do any agitating to stop them growing wheat."
I was counting the days. I reckoned Deputy Corry's word has about the same endurance as a snowball in a slow oven. It does not matter a damn what he says or what he does not say, but I was just intrigued to find out how long the pledge would last. There is not a pawnbroker in the world who would not grow bankrupt if the pledges he got were not left with him longer than Deputy Corry's word.
Deputy Corry always kept his word.
I do not give a fiddle-de-dee what Deputy Corry says or does not say; he will do all the damage he can; he will make all the mischief; he will wheedle and snarl at everybody who is damn fool enough to listen to him. Let us take it for granted that he is hell-bound to do all the damage, to spread all the falsehood and make all the misrepresentations that it is possible for one subtle tongue to do. In despite of that, I depend on the farmers of this country, without compulsion, without intimidation, without threats, to produce from the land of this country a larger cereal product than ever was produced before, and the House may wish to remember that 600,000 Fianna Fáil acres of wheat produced little more than half of what 350,000 acres produced in 1950.
There are some fools in this country who believe that the important thing is to plough up land and sow it, without any regard to the yield they get. But the farmers who collaborate with this Government—and they are the majority—are concerned to make each acre entrusted to their care produce a little more than it ever produced before and leave it a little better in the autumn than they found it in the spring. And they are doing it and they will do it, despite the Deputy. I told the Deputy and the deputation that came with him that I was prepared, if they would put forward a proposal from the Beet Growers' Association which purported to represent the best growers, to make a payment of a premium to any farmer who brought good, dry wheat with a substantial bushel weight to the mill, and a corresponding reduction for the farmer who brought dirty wheat, inferior wheat, such as I am now having to abstract from the corpus of what we have in stock to convert it into animal feeding. Under the Fianna Fáil Administration the man who tore the wheat out of the field and brought it wet in the bags to the mill got precisely the same price as the man who sweated blood to try to bring the crop to the mill in as good a condition as possible, in the circumstances in which he had to work.
I want to say that the farmer who does his best will get paid for doing it, and I want to say that the chancer who seeks to live on the bounty of his neighbour and who dumps rubbish into the mill that can be called wheat and demands the full guaranteed price, will be salted and will get no more than his wheat is worth. I believe that so long as this Government is in office, 85 to 90 per cent. of the wheat will qualify for the premium, and so far as the other 10 per cent. is concerned, the more it is salted the better pleased I will be. I have told the farmers and on the consequences I stake my political survival, and I stake my political existence on this—I will cheerfully accept condemnation if I am wrong—that the farmers will produce more and will produce better crops when they are told the reason and asked to help, than they would ever produce under the lash of bailiffs, emergency men and inspectors or Guards mustered on their fences, as my predecessor announced his intention of doing.
Now let us in this cereal year put this matter finally in issue. If the policy of Deputy Smith, my predecessor, evoked a better return from the farmers than my policy evokes, I pledge myself to stand aside, so far as I am concerned, and make way for Deputy Smith, because he will be proved right and I will be proved to be wrong. But I know, personally and vicariously, the farmers, and I will back them to do as free men twice as much as they would ever do as slaves. We lifted the dirty, rotten, political machine of Fianna Fáil off the backs of our people and as free men they will do better in 1951 than they ever did in the 15 accursed years when Fianna Fáil was grinding them down.
The Dáil adjourned at 11 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Thursday, 1st March.