The accounts of the Department of Agriculture as disclosed in this Supplementary Estimate are certainly worthy of close scrutiny in my opinion by the Comptroller and Auditor General. The Minister is switching a sum of about £1,500,000 from certain purposes to other purposes. He is asking the Dáil to give him over £1,000,000 —£1,165,000—for flour and wheaten meal subsidies. The Minister himself, in other debates, has admitted that Irish wheat, which he bought at £25 a ton, is being ground for cattle feeding. He is asking the Dáil to give him a sum of money which will enable him to sell the wheat he bought at £25 a ton for cattle feeding and to pay the difference between £32 a ton, which he is paying for American wheat, and the price at which the rationed flour is sold. It is quite clear that the Minister is doing that in order to give an indirect subsidy to the export of cattle and eggs to Britain.
Committee on Finance. - Vote 27—Agriculture (Resumed).
No ground wheat is in receipt of any subsidy whatever.
That is true, but the wheat that should have been kept for human consumption and ground for rationed flour is being sold for cattle feeding, and it is costing the Exchequer very much more to buy American wheat and reduce it to the price at which rationed flour is sold, an extra £7 per ton. The Minister himself admitted in another debate that he was, in fact, grinding the Irish wheat for cattle feeding. I say that this difference of £7 a ton is a matter which the Comptroller and Auditor-General should look into. I would not mind passing a subsidy for cattle feeding if the Minister came into the Dáil and proved that there was a case for it, but I certainly do object to passing a sum of money ostensibly to be used for subsidising food for human consumption and having that subsidy switched to subsidising cattle food.
Is the Deputy not mistaken?
The Minister admitted in one debate—I will quote the reference before I am finished—that he was grinding Irish wheat for cattle feeding and selling it for cattle feeding.
Does the Deputy realise that he is mixing up the prices of green wheat and dried wheat?
Let the Minister claim a 5 per cent. loss for drying and bring the £25 up to £26.
Oh, nonsense, £29.
Let the Minister claim that it is £29—I do not admit it, but if it is £29 there is a difference of £3. We are giving a £3 subsidy to cattle food out of the Vote for human food subsidies. Now, apart from that aspect of the case, there is the further fact that we are spending millions of borrowed dollars in buying cereals from the United States of America in order to convert them into animal products and eggs for Britain. Last year we imported about £6,000,000 worth of cereals over 1949; and our total excess of exports of animals and livestock products in 1950 over 1949 was just about £6,000,000. We are therefore actually saving the British dollar purchases. We are borrowing dollars from America to buy cereals and converting those cereals into animal products and selling them to Britain for £s. The Taoiseach at one time held the theory that we should hit the British in their pride, their prestige and their pockets. The Minister for Agriculture must be playing some very subtle game of hitting the British in their pride and in their prestige by borrowing American dollars and giving the British the results. It is a fantastic economic policy to borrow dollars to buy something which we are converting into a sterling sale. Perhaps the Minister thinks he can implement the Taoiseach's policy by hitting the British in their soft under-belly with cheap eggs.
Another aspect is that there is a sum of £55,000 which the Minister is saving on food subsidies for school meals over a period of 12 months. He has recently informed local authorities that he is not prepared to give them rationed flour for school meals and, by his refusal, he will thereby save £55,000 for the Exchequer. Now school meals were largely provided in those schools where it is in the public interest that the children should be provided with cheap meals.
Free meals.
Free meals.
And they will get them in exactly the same quantity and on exactly the same scale.
At the expense of the ratepayers.
And of the Minister for Social Welfare.
It does not matter at whose expense it is. They will get the meals.
But will they get them?
Every single standard.
I think it will be found that local authorities will argue that, if the Minister and the State do not think it worth their while to subsidise school meals in the way in which they were subsidised under the bad old Fianna Fáil régime, there is no reason why the ratepayers should do it.
They are subsidised by the Minister for Social Welfare. He makes an annual grant.
The important point is that the Minister is saving £55,000 on this transaction; that is the Minister's own estimate, 17/6 per sack and £55,000.
Will it, in fact, affect the rates anywhere and, if so, by how much?
At least half of it will. After all, was it not claimed for this Coalition Government that it would be a better Government than the Fianna Fáil Government——
So it is.
——in respect of other social services.
So it is.
The social service which has done most good for the money spent on it in the past was this particular one in connection with school meals.
They will not be reduced by one sandwich.
At the ratepayers' expense. As far as the Minister for Agriculture is concerned the cost of them will be reduced by £55,000.
If the Deputy hears of a reduction of so much as one sandwich, I shall be glad if he will let me know at once.
As a matter of fact we will have bigger and better sandwiches very soon.
Bigger and better sandwiches in the dim and distant future: that is how the Coalition Government got in; that is how they are keeping in; that is how they are keeping together—bigger and better sandwiches some time in the future, but less sandwiches to-day. The Minister will save this £55,000 at the expense——
Of the Minister for Social Welfare.
——of the schoolchildren.
That is not true.
Would the Deputy state what paragraph in this Supplementary Estimate has any reference to school meals?
The reference is the food subsidies, for which we are passing £1,000,000 extra.
Where is this £55,000?
The sum would be £55,000 more if the Minister for Agriculture was as good as Fianna Fáil was in regard to this subsidy.
We are dealing with a sum here for a Supplementary Estimate.
£55,000 for a full year and this is a Supplementary Estimate for the end of the year.
We all know that Deputy Captain Cowan wants to protect the Minister for Agriculture.
If there is any suggestion that the Chair will not do it, I would like it to be withdrawn. I cannot see where that money comes into this Estimate.
There is a flour and wheaten subsidy.
I see that.
The Minister is looking for £1,165,000.
And the Deputy is apparently advocating more.
I am advocating that the Minister should take this Estimate back and reconsider it. I am advocating that he should reconsider, among other matters, the granting of the same subsidy for free school meals that the Fianna Fáil Government granted. There was a time when the Minister used to beat himself upon the chest and proclaim that he would not eat tomatoes unless the people in Dominick Street were able to eat tomatoes too, and this extra amount that he is getting on white flour——
Where do tomatoes come in?
Surely tomatoes do not come into it.
I am on to white flour.
I did not know we made white flour from tomatoes.
Or tomatoes from white flour.
I have gone away from tomatoes. That was merely an introductory sentence. The Minister is prepared to stuff himself——
With tomatoes?
——with white flour cakes, but the people in Dominick Street may not be able to buy cakes made from white flour at the price. After all the people in Dominick Street should be entitled to buy an odd bun. They are entitled to have their children provided with free school meals but, as far as the Minister is concerned, he does not give a hang whether they are or not. He can afford to buy a cake even if it goes up from 2d. to 3d. and have one law for himself and the Exchequer and another for the tomato growers.
For the tomato growers? I am damned if I know where they come in. Certainly they are well able to buy white flour, or pink flour, if they want it.
The Minister will take his last halfpenny off the white flour even though it is the poor people who have to pay it when they want an odd bit of sweet cake, but he will not ask them to pay an economic price for tomatoes.
I thought we were finished with tomatoes.
The Minister drew me on to the subject.
It was a passing reference.
Before I pass away from this wheat and flour subsidy, I want to say that as far as the country is concerned, the Minister stands in relation to wheat growing where he always stood. He has spent a lot of the public money in a year which the Taoiseach has said is a very dangerous one, in which the Minister for Finance has announced that it is necessary to spend money to stock up, in which the Minister for Industry and Commerce is urging everybody to stock up. The Minister for Agriculture has not yet asked one single farmer to grow one grain of wheat, which is an essential commodity for human beings. He did ask the farmers by advertisement to grow cattle food. Will he ask them to grow food for human beings in the form of wheat? I do not worship wheat but I think it is a very useful crop. It is an essential crop.
As all that has been fully debated on the Vote on Account, I do not see where the general policy of the Minister arises here.
I am on the food subsidy. If the Minister would ask the farmers to grow wheat in this particular year, their food subsidy next year might be very much less. We started off buying foreign wheat at the beginning of this year for many less pounds a ton than we paid at the end of it, and if the present trend goes on it is more than £32 a ton we may be paying for foreign wheat.
But it will not be £50, which is what we paid for the Argentine wheat.
We do not know whether it will be £50 or £150. A starving person is prepared to give very much more for a loaf of bread than a man who has a full stomach.
Thanks be to God, we are not starving now, whatever was the case in 1947.
As far as the Minister is concerned, I think sometimes he would like to see us starving so that we could be more subject to pressure from certain quarters.
Thanks be to God, the Deputy shows no signs of starvation.
To conclude this, is it the Minister's position that he is not going to appeal to the farmers to grow wheat?
Our policy is to grow more wheat on a smaller acreage of land than Fianna Fáil ever succeeded in doing.
Will the Minister this year ask the farmers to grow wheat?
I will ask them to do their own business in their own way to their own best advantage.
The Minister by this advertisement has asked them to grow an extra 200,000 acres of Ymer barley; oats, 800,000 acres, and so on.
That is not here.
Finish it now.
If the Chair allows me, I will. Potatoes, 400,000 acres; hay and silage, 2,000,000 acres.
Anois. What comes after that?
"Preparation of these crops must be undertaken now."
Yes?
"Preparation for these crops must be undertaken now, in addition to such other crops as farmers may intend to sow, such as——"
Léigh amach é anois.
Léighfidh mé amach é.
Má tá tú macánta, ach creidim nach bhfuil.
I think we had better drop the dialect.
"——such as wheat, industrial barley, beet and other root crops".
An bhfeiceann tú?
Chím agus cloisim agus molaim don Aire ligint don Teachta dul ar aghaidh, gan cur isteach air.
The Minister has asked the farmers to grow stated acreages of all these crops. He did not ask the farmers to grow wheat. Is he prepared to ask them to grow wheat? If I at this moment said to the farmers, "Do not grow wheat," the Minister would say I was guilty of sabotage. Is not that true?
The Deputy is inviting interruptions now. The Minister will reply in a regular manner, not by question and answer across the floor of the House in this manner. There would be no order in debate then.
We will leave it at that. The Minister came in here the other day introducing this Estimate and he was full of beans, as usual. The Minister can never get going in any debate until he first nominates an enemy. He is like Don Quixote in the old days, who charged the sheep, but before he charged the sheep he had to nominate them as being the greatest enemies of the human race that ever were.
The Deputy does not seek a job as Sancho Panza?
No. Deputy Cowan has that.
I did not catch that.
The Minister nominated in this particular case the pedigree seed merchants as the enemy of the farmers and he was pretty bitter about them. He talked about them as "these boys", "these monopolists". He said—at column 1643, Volume 124, Dáil Debates:—
"I simply abolished the monopoly and as soon as I abolished the monopoly the boys did not last much longer."
He alluded to them several times as "the boys" and so on. He also alluded tothem as "a ring".
We have a small item, £5,000, in the Supplementary Estimate which is going to what the Minister calls "a ring", to these monopolists. He gave an explanation in regard to this matter which simply did not hold water because what he said disagreed fundamentally with what is written on the face of the Estimate. The Minister said that he gave them this £5,000 because, as he said at column 1642:—
"Being reasonable men on both sides we eventually compromised on the issue and agreed that the payment of this sum would liquidate any claims that they had without prejudice on our part that any claims existed."
That is his history of the transaction. But on the face of the Estimate it was disclosed that this sum of money was given to what the Minister called a ring because they had at the end of the wheat season a certain amount of assembled wheat which, not having been taken by the Irish farmers, had to be given to the mills and this £5,000 went to make up the difference between their costs and the price they got from the mills. The Minister said that he has effectively broken this ring, that he has put an end to the pedigree seed growing. What the Minister has done effectively is to kill as far as he was able the production of pure line seed wheat for which the farmers over a number of years paid £4 10s. 0d. a barrel and this year pure line pedigree seed wheat is offered to us by the Swedes and the British at £6 10s. 0d., so that the Minister has endeavoured to kill the production of seed wheat in Ireland and to import more from Sweden and England at a very much higher price.
One other aspect of that, and the most important aspect of it, is that the farmers do not know, when they are importing from Sweden and Britain, whether the wheat, oats or barley is pure line seed or not. A Chinn Chomhairle, I can scarcely hear myself, with Deputy Cowan and Deputy Lehane speaking. If they want to converse, they should go outside.
I am very sorry. If the Deputy would be interesting, I am quite sure we would listen to him.
If Deputy Cowan is not interested, I cannot help it, but I feel certain a lot of the farmers throughout the country are.
I said "interesting".
This year we are paying the British and the Swedes very much more than we paid Irish seed merchants for pure line seed, and we have no guarantee that it is pure line seed. I said to the Minister, in the debate on the Estimate for the Department of Agriculture last year or the year before, that if he was not satisfied with the personnel of this organisation who were producing pure line seed, he should set up his own organisation.
Exactly, and that I did a fortnight ago.
It should have been done three years ago.
You have to get the right personnel.
I know. You are going to set up an organisation now. What is it going to do?
Propagate good seed.
It cannot propagate anything worth while this year.
Begob, it cannot.
The Minister admits that?
Oh, certainly.
Some three years ago the Minister interfered with this other organisation and he did not put anything up in its stead. He is now telling us that after his term of office ends there will be some pure line seed available from some organisation.
I destroyed the monopoly.
The Minister has not destroyed the monopoly of the British and the Swedes in the matter of pure line seed this year. He gave them the monopoly. He has set up a British and a Swedish monopoly on pure line seed.
The Deputy can procure any pure line seed he likes.
Of course I can, with an organisation; but as an individual I cannot.
Why can you not?
With an organisation I can. Am I going to buy some of the stock from Britain or Sweden as pure line?
What about Glasnevin?
In Glasnevin their pure line seed was bought out long ago. Where can you get pure line seed? What has the Minister done? With his crazy approach to this problem, he has destroyed an effort, which was an honest effort, to improve the output of this land by the production within the country, and under our own surveillance, of pure line seeds—wheat, barely, oats and everything else. I think it is a completely disastrous policy.
You are rambling.
I am not rambling. The Minister said he set up an organisation a fortnight ago. He destroyed this thing a couple of years ago. It could have been going ahead, building up. The effort started during the war to produce good seeds of all sorts should have been continued until we got to the point where every farmer sowing an acre with grass, oats, wheat, mangels or turnips, should be sowing it with good pure seed, produced under such conditions as would give a guarantee to those farmers and to the Department that it was good, sound seed.
The best seed at the lowest price.
The best seed at the lowest price. What is the position? Instead of getting good pure line seed wheat at £4 10s. we can get it from Britain at £6 10s. That is the net result.
You are rambling.
I am not rambling. The Minister may know something about certain little trades, but he knows nothing about agriculture. He did not get this year from the seed merchants their price lists, so he could not deny that allegedly pure line seed from Britain will cost £6 10s. and we used to get it for £4 10s. I am talking now about wheat.
Has the Deputy been stung by the seed merchants?
No. I am sure if the merchants are charging £6 10s. for English seed, the English merchants are getting a good whack out of it, very much more than our merchants got when they had to pay 65/- for wheat in the harvest and were selling it at £4 10s.
Another little fable which the Minister told us, related to hides. He expanded quite a lot on that and he talked again about a ring. What do we gather from what the Minister said? We heard his denunciation of the "ring" and we heard him denouncing Fianna Fáil for setting it up. From the Minister's figures we gather that the ring is getting £5 8s. 4d. of a subsidy per hide, instead of £3 2s. 6d. under Fianna Fáil. He is giving them £5 8s. 4d. a hide.
Is it as much as that? The Deputy agrees with me that it is monstrous? Is it not monstrous?
I am only quoting the Minister's figures. When Fianna Fáil were in office the figure was 10d.
No, 5d.
At that time hides were fetching 1/8 in Britain, so there was a difference of 1/3.
1/3 a lb.
The Minister averaged a hide at 50 lbs., so that would be £3 2s. 6d. Now, according to the Minister's figures, the value of a hide in England is 3/- a lb.
No, 2/10.
"The world price is now 3/- a lb." the Minister said, "and they are getting that hide at 10d."
I am saying the figure is 2/10. Read on.
I will read on until the cows come home, if necessary. I say that the world price is 3/-. Is that true?
I think so.
Then they are getting the hides at 10d., so the subsidy is 2/2.
Certainly, it is 2/- and the Deputy thinks it is scandalous.
Therefore, the ring is now getting £5 8s. 4d. subsidy per hide.
Is it not monstrous?
That is practically twice as much as they got under Fianna Fáil.
Deputy Lemass is there beside you and he will tell you the whole story.
The Deputy should be allowed to speak without those interruptions.
Is he not asking me questions?
The Minister's reference to Deputy Lemass was scarcely in reply to a question.
I am trying to drag the truth out of the Minister and it is a pretty difficult operation. The Minister informed us that this operation was costing cattle graziers £1,000,000 to £1,500,000. That is a pretty hefty sum. If the Minister gave it to the egg producers it would represent 10/- a great hundred, or 1/- a dozen on the exports. The Minister told the egg producers a couple of years ago that he was going to give them a sure, guaranteed, remunerative market for all the eggs they could produce.
There are no eggs mentioned in this Estimate.
Would it not break the Deputy's heart if something happened?
I certainly support the Minister in telling the British that they will get no eggs from here at 2/- a dozen. The Minister thought that 3/- a dozen was a rather poor price when maize was round about £1 per cwt.
It was 28/- a cwt. when eggs were 3/- a dozen.
Certainly if that was a poor price——
I have told the Deputy that eggs are not mentioned in this Vote. It is a very nice discussion we are having between the Minister and the Deputy, but it is out of order.
The Minister has almost £500,000 here for butter. Here again it was very difficult to get the truth out of the Minister. I have not yet got the truth out of him, in my opinion, in regard to how this £500,000 is to be used. When the Minister made his opening speech he said that they calculated that production last year would be about 700,000 cwt. Then he amended that in the course of my speech to say that that should have been 650,000 cwt. I do not believe the Minister calculated on a reduction in the production of butter in 1950 as against 1949 but according to the figures which he gave the Dáil the other day the estimated production in 1949 was 687,000 cwt. Surely the Minister did not in 1949 think the production in 1950 would be lower than that by some 37,000 cwt.? We all know the Minister is an optimist, a foolish optimist in many respects, but I think the original statement in this regard is more likely to be true, that, in fact, they did estimate for a production of 700,000 cwt. However, we are not likely to get at the truth of that matter, and I only want to mark this, that in 1949 there was a production of 687,000 cwt. and the Minister told us that he estimated that the production of butter would be down the following year instead of up.
I have since discovered that we sold 6,000,000 wrappers instead of 2,000,000 wrappers.
Was it to wrap Danish butter?
No, to wrap Irish butter.
Again I want to warn the Minister. I have seen these wrappers in which there was Danish or New Zealand butter. It was an Irish creamery butter wrapper and the usual printing on it to the effect that it was Irish creamery butter. Then there was a stamp which said that it was New Zealand or Danish butter. I think it would have been much better to have used a plain piece of paper rather than a wrapper of this kind.
So do I, but I cannot get it in Britain or anywhere else.
It has led to a lot of confusion. It is a pretty confusing business, not only for us here in the Dáil who are trying to extract some information from the Minister, but also for the ordinary people. I think it was a mistake to have issued an Irish wrapper for Danish or New Zealand butter.
I cannot get any other wrapper. I cannot get any wrappers at all.
I think that the reason the Minister is asking us for this £500,000 for butter this year is not because Irish production went up to such an extent as would warrant this Supplementary Estimate, but because he carried out this unfortunate transaction of selling Irish butter cheaply and buying New Zealand and Danish butter dearly. That is the reason for a large portion of this subsidy we have to pay.
That is nonsense and you know it.
It is true, and I am perfectly certain that the people who are close up to this business know it is true. The Minister can deny it here because I have no access to the papers that would show it is true. I do not know what the Comptroller and Auditor-General can do with that, but if the Minister is telling this Dáil that he is asking for a sum of money to subsidise the consumption of Irish butter, and if he is asking the Dáil to grant it for that reason alone, then I think the Comptroller and Auditor-General should look into the whole matter and see whether or not it is a fact, that the reason we have to give this £500,000 of money is to subsidise very dearly bought Danish and New Zealand butter.
The subsidy is to the consumers of butter.
The subsidy is to bridge the gap between what the Minister pays and what he receives.
That is right.
It is used to bridge the gap between what the Minister paid the Irish farmer and what the farmer receives from the consumer. It is being used in this case to bridge the gap between what the Minister paid for New Zealand and Danish butter——
That replaced Irish butter sold abroad.
That is to say, the Minister would not have required all these extra butter subsidies if he had kept at home the Irish butter which he sold abroad, and sold it to Irish consumers.
Nonsense, that is not true.
It is true.
Do not be silly.
It is true.
The whole trouble is what is the truth?
There was a certain gentleman who asked that question on one occasion but seeing that it is Deputy Cowan who asks it on this occasion, it does not matter. The Minister tried to tell me on the last day that he was asking for £500,000 extra—more than one-fifth extra for a butter subsidy simply because his Estimate had been out by one twenty-eighth. He changed the story later to say that instead of being out one twenty-eighth, it was out three twenty-eighths. That still leaves two twenty-eighths unaccounted for. Unless the Minister wants this subsidy to utilise it for some other unknown reason, it is for a butter subsidy. He is using this butter subsidy to bridge the very big gap between the Danish price and the New Zealand price and the price for which he would have got Irish butter.
Certainly in so far as it replaced the butter exported earlier in the year.
If the Minister kept the butter that was exported earlier in the year, he would not have to ask for so much.
Why?
Because the Minister got less for the butter he exported than what he had to pay for that which we imported.
Nonsense.
The Minister read out the prices in his own answer to questions.
What is the difference?
We will get somebody else to deal with that question. I will get one of our Deputies to deal with that particular thing in detail for the Minister's benefit. The Minister seems to have given up his attempt to drown the British in eggs, but he proposes to drown the world in Kerry cows' milk, and he is going to do it all for the £800 that is in this Estimate. Now the Minister took us on a trip around the world. He had Kerry cows eating cactus in the Middle East and some very dry grass in the Orient, and all that was going to happen because the Minister proposes to spend in this Estimate a sum of £800. I would like to see the breed of Kerry cows promoted in the poor areas in the country, areas in which they would be more suitable than the cattle that are at present being kept there. Indeed, if we could establish a foreign trade in Kerry cows for poor areas, I think it would be an excellent idea. I have seen Kerry cows outside of Ireland, and I have seen them doing well; but, if the Minister is starting off on that type of campaign, he will have to spend very much more than £800. The Minister made more chat about the £800 than he did about the rest of the £1,500,000. I think it would be a good idea if the Minister would take some practical steps to promote the export of Kerry cows, but it should be done in a reasonable way. If he is going to go into it in a big way, then he should have asked for a reasonable sum in connection with it.
Is it to pay people to take the Kerry cows?
You are paying the British to take eggs, are you not?
No.
We are actually borrowing dollars to pay them to take our eggs.
There is neither head nor tail to you.
The difficulty about the Minister is that it is very hard for us to know which is his head and which is his tail. He stands on his head when he starts talking about agriculture. One time he says to the farmer's wife that she is going to know, before the chicken puts its beak through the shell, what she is going to get for every egg which it lays during its economic lifetime, but the next day he turns around and says he is going to cut the price of eggs by 6d. a dozen, and in another six months, he cuts it by another 6d. a dozen. The difficulty about the Minister is that the farmers of this country do not know from day to day where they are with him.
I announced the price of eggs this time 12 months.
About May, but what about the chickens that were hatched up to May of last year and that are going to live a normal life for two years—to the spring of 1952—before they will be slaughtered? The Minister wants them slaughtered by the million now.
It is not in order for the Minister or for the Deputy to be talking about eggs on this Estimate. I suggest that the Deputy be allowed to conclude his statement.
I am all for that except when he asks me a question.
I did not ask any question from the Minister. However, the Minister, when he gets into difficulties, goes off into some dramatic statement. We wanted the Minister to deal with the question of butter and to tell us what he really wanted this £500,000 for. We wanted him to deal with the question of wheat, with what is likely to be the situation in connection with it, and what he wants the farmers to do. Instead of that, he goes cowpunching Kerry cows all over the world. The Minister is living up to his cowboy hat in the matter, but that does not bring us any nearer getting wheat for our people in the coming year.
Relevance is the order of the day.
The Minister can engage in his horse opera in regard to Kerry cows, but really what the Minister should do is to tell the farmers what he wants them to do in regard to wheat growing during the coming year, and give them a price that will enable them to produce it.
Dhein an Teachta Mac Aogáin iarracht a chur in a luí ar an dTeach go raibh ceo do-scaipthe thart timpeall ar cheist an ime. Níor éirigh leis ach tuille ceo do tharrac chuige. I mo thuairmse, níl aon rúndiamhar ag baint leis an gceist seo. Do réir mar a chitear domsa, is é a tharla ná gur ith agus gur chaith muintir na tíre seo níos mó ime anuraidh ná mar a dheineadar riamh roimhe seo, níos mó ná mar a mheas an tAire a d'fhéadaidis a ithe, a cheannach ná a chaitheamh.
Bhí breall ar an Aire sa mhéid sin. Dhein sé botún agus tuaiplis, ach ní dóigh liom gur cóir é a thógaint air go raibh stad na tíre agus stad agus acfuinn na ndaoine chomh láidir sin go rabhadar i ndan tuille den bhia tábh-achtach seo d'úsáid. Ní fheadar an bhfuil an ceart agam sa mhéid atá ráite agam, ach sin é mo thuairim macánta, agus is mar sin a mhíníonn an tAire an scéal.
Sin é an scéal, ach ní hí sin an fhírinne.
Creidimse gurb í an fhírinne í agus is dóigh liom go gcreideann muintir na hÉireann í. Ná tógtar ar an Aire gur éirigh leis níos mó ime do sholáthair do mhuintir na hÉireann ná mar a soláthraíodh riamh cheana.
I do not want to delay the House for more than a few minutes on this Supplementary Estimate. Between Deputy Aiken and the Minister, there has been, whether wittingly or unwittingly, a certain amount of fog created about this whole question of the butter subsidy and, particularly, about the relationship of that subsidy to the importation of New Zealand and Danish butter, which, unfortunately, the people of this city have been obliged to take on their ration. To my mind the explanation—I speak subject to correction by the Minister if he does not adopt my view of it—is a very simple one, and I suggest to Deputy Aiken that it is one in respect of which no blame can be attached to the Minister. As I understand the figures, the people of this country consumed during the past year a greater quantity of butter than they had ever consumed before, so far as we can gather from recorded statistics.
The Minister underestimated the capacity of our people to purchase butter; in other words, the Minister underestimated the general prosperity of our people. That was a mistake on the Minister's part and I quarrel with his decision to export butter at the time he did so, but it was a pardonable mistake, and a mistake in respect of which I suggest we should rather not criticise the Minister but congratulate ourselves on the fact that our people were in a position to have, in reasonably generous quantities, this very necessary component of diet. It is quite easy to impute to the Minister the worst possible motives, to say that he made a colossal mistake and that he wilfully wanted to subsidise the New Zealand and Danish producers of butter at the expense of our own people; but anyone looking at the facts objectively and examining them without rancour, without bias and without prejudice against the Minister is driven inescapably to the conclusion that the Minister's mistake was the one I have outlined, namely, an underestimation of the purchasing capacity of our people in respect of this article of diet. That is the only comment I want to make on that.
What brought me into the House for this Supplementary Estimate was a much less important and much smaller matter, because I did not think there could be any real controversy on the other question. The point with which I want to deal arises on sub-head F (7) in respect of the additional grants to university colleges.
The appearance of that figure on my Estimate is a pure convention. It is the Minister for Finance who answers to the House for it and its appearance on my Estimate is merely a survival of the pre-1924 practice when the Department was responsible for the agricultural college. We transferred it to University College, Dublin, in 1924, but never transferred that part of the university grant which applies to it from my Vote. But for that, it would not be there at all; it would be on the Vote for Universities and Colleges.
So far as my recollection goes—I have not referred to the Official Reports—the Minister for Finance, in dealing with the grants to University College, Dublin, explained to the House that expressly excluded from them were the sums in respect of the agricultural faculty and the agricultural college. I do not know whether I am to accept the view of the Minister for Finance or the view expressed now by the Minister for Agriculture.
That is a choice you will have to make very often.
It is a choice which we on these benches are quite capable of making. We are in no dilemma at all with regard to it. Inasmuch as this figure in respect of additional provision to University College, Dublin, Faculty of General Agriculture, appears on this Supplementary Estimate, it must be on this Supplementary Estimate that I deal with it. I understand—again I am open to correction—that it is proposed that the greater portion of this sum should be allotted for the purpose of raising the salaries of the six professors and four lecturers in the faculty of agriculture at Albert College and that a little over £1,000 is to be allocated in respect of increases to assistant lecturers, of whom there are nine. I suggest to the Minister that where a sum of money of that amount is being allocated for salary increases, the first charge upon such a sum should be the claim of those less well remunerated, and that, before giving rather substantial increases to professors and lecturers already in receipt of sufficient, if not substantial, emoluments, consideration should be given to those less well remunerated.
I am so unfamiliar with this procedure that I do not know what the practice is, but I understood that we never discussed in Dáil Éireann the internal affairs of the university; that the only question was whether or not the grants should be given; and that the House deliberately eschewed a debate on the internal administration of the college. I am not interrupting the Deputy particularly, but I understand that that is the custom and I should be obliged for the guidance of the Chair on the matter.
The internal administration of the university is not a subject for discussion here, but I do not think I can stop Deputy Lehane from making some remarks about the amount of money set out on the paper before me, which is the responsibility of the Minister.
What the Deputy is dealing with is the apportionment of this money in the university.
I do not think he can do that.
I am not doing any more than giving to the House, for the benefit of the Minister, reasons which might make it difficult for me— may I put it this way? —to support the Minister in asking the House for this sum of £6,000. The House is being asked to vote a sum of £6,000 and I am entitled to suggest it to the Minister —I am not questioning in any way the autonomous position of University College, Dublin—that it would be much easier for the House to agree to vote this sum, were the House satisfied that it was being wisely and properly utilised. In my submission, it would be wiser and more proper to utilise the major portion of this sum in increasing the salaries of those less well remunerated than to appropriate three-quarters of it for a small number of people already in receipt of substantial salaries, while ignoring the just claims of the assistant lecturers, who, in my submission, are not properly remunerated at the moment.
Is it the Minister does that or the college authorities? I understand that it is the college authorities who apportion the money when they get it, that the Minister simply gives it.
With respect, Sir, I can refer the House to precedents where moneys were made available for this institution, University College, Dublin, and conditions attached by the House to the method of expending those moneys. I am suggesting to the Minister that he should attach, as a condition precedent to giving this additional sum to the agricultural faculty in the university, a proviso that due regard should be had to increasing to a reasonable level the salaries of the assistant lecturers in that faculty.
How would that square with the autonomy of the college?
Surely there is no interference with the autonomy of the College if the Minister says: "I am prepared to advance to you and to make available for you additional money, but, before doing so, I should like to know that you are going to spend it in a particular way." I suggest that I have ample authority for stating that there is a precedent for that and that it has been done in this House not on one occasion but on several occasions. Having made the point, I do not wish to labour it further. I merely commend to the Minister the general principle that, before having regard to the claims of people in receipt of substantial emoluments, he should first of all give due weight and consideration to the claims of people such as assistant lecturers in the faculty of agriculture to reasonable increases in their salaries.
I want to endeavour to get from the Minister some intelligent explanation of his administration of the flour subsidy. The additional amount he is asking for flour subsidy this year—£1,165,000—is by far the biggest item in the Supplementary Estimate and the explanation he gave the Dáil in regard to that item on Thursday night last was most unintelligible. If we are to believe the Minister, the administration of flour subsidy has been covered by trickery and deceit for the past three years. No figure given by him or by the Minister for Finance was accurate and no further reliance can be placed upon any figure given us now. That is true, if we are to believe the Minister.
The matter of flour subsidy involves a substantial amount of money and the Dáil should be particularly careful as to how that money is utilised and for what purposes. It should insist on getting some reliable estimate of the expenditure and some detailed account of how it was effected. On Thursday night last the Minister started off by telling us that his Department had estimated the cost of flour subsidy at £7,400,000. For some reason, which he did not explain, the figure of £7,200,000 was put in the Book of Estimates. Later, in the course of his remarks, he gave another computation made at that time—an anonymous computation —which placed the cost of subsidy at £7,465,000. He injudiciously told us how the amount of subsidy was calculated—50,600 sacks per week, on the average, subsidised to the extent of 57/6 and involving, if my calculation is correct, £7,565,000.
Where is the Deputy quoting from?
From column 1644 of the Official Report of 8th March. That number of sacks per week, subsidised to the extent of 57/6 per sack, requires £7,465,000. However, the Minister told us, from the sale of white flour he got an excess profit of 17/6 a sack. The sales of white flour averaged 4,750 sacks per week, which reduced the amount required for subsidy by £216,000, leaving a net sum required of £7,349,000.
If the Minister's estimates of flour consumption and subsidy costs are correct, then either the arithmetic of his departmental officials is all wrong or his own arithmetic requires brushing up.
Will the Deputy please read from column 1644 what he is referring to.
I am quoting from the Minister's speech of Thursday last. The original estimate was for £7,200,000 and that is the figure that appeared in the Book of Estimates.
And our revised Estimate is for £8,365,000.
I am talking about how the original Estimate was arrived at. Later on we were told that the Department computed the cost of flour and wheatenmeal subsidy at £7,400,000. Why did that figure not appear in the Book of Estimates? The Minister said that that figure was based on estimated weekly deliveries of 50,600 sacks of subsidised flour at the rate of 57/6 per sack——
I said that the estimated subsidy payable was thought probably to work out at 57/6 per sack.
——which would need a total provision of £7,565,000.
That is not my calculation.
That calculation is according to my arithmetic and I think it is reliable.
That is the Deputy's calculation.
From that, however, he says that we must take £216,000, which is the excess profit which he made upon the sale of white flour. White flour is sold above the——
Where is that in column 1644?
"We hoped on an estimate of the delivery of unsubsidised flour to recoup ourselves to the tune of 4,750 sacks a week..."
And, later on, on that—
"to realise a sum of 17/6 a sack, in relief of the subsidy payable on rationed flour."
Is that not all there? That gives a net figure of £7,349,000, according to my calculation.
First of all I want to know why the Estimate of the Department was not inserted in the Book of Estimates and why the book, if it was prepared on the basis suggested by the Minister, gave a wrong figure—but particularly, why that figure was £1,165,000 out. The Minister will not claim that he gave a coherent explanation of that point. He said that the balance required to meet the original estimate, based on 12 months' delivery to approximately 19th January, 1951, is £265,000. A little more explanation in regard to that figure is needed.
Then, apparently, he contends that there was some sort of book-keeping change under which provision for subsidy was extended from 1st January to 28th February, which required £700,000. I do not believe that that is the correct explanation. In addition, there was another £200,000 to make some back payment due to the millers for an earlier year.
The total amounts to £1,165,000.
Let us take the Minister's explanation in the light of the history of the flour subsidy since the Coalition came into office. In 1948 the Book of Estimates contained a figure of approximately £9,500,000 for flour subsidy. The Minister for Finance came to the Dáil and announced his device for averaging the cost of subsidy over a five-year period—involving a reduction in the cost of subsidy in that year of £2,500,000 and an increase in subsequent years.
Which was the excess cost of the Argentine wheat which was bought by the Deputy when he was Minister for Industry and Commerce.
The Argentine wheat in 1948 brought the average price of imported wheat to £33 10s. 0d. per ton against £32 per ton which we are paying now. Let us deal with the finances. The Minister for Finance got this brilliant idea of averaging the high cost of imported wheat in that year over five years. He said he based his calculations on the assumption that the price of wheat would not rise above the two dollars per bushel contracted for under the International Wheat Agreement.
One dollar 80 cents.
I think the ceiling price was two dollars. The actual price in the first year was one dollar 80 cents. He assured us that over the five-year period—on the basis of his pessimistic assumptions—the average cost of flour subsidy would not exceed £7,134,000. The price of wheat did fall and freights fell also, but in no year has the cost of the flour subsidy fallen below the figure quoted by the Minister for Finance in his first Budget statement.
Let us examine the facts as we know them. The Minister for Finance did not do anything of the kind he had proposed to do. The idea of having £2,500,000 in the form of subsidy in 1948 spread over a five-year period was dropped at some time in that year without the Dáil being informed of the fact. According to information subsequently published, the amount paid in 1948-49 was £9,900,000—not the Minister for Finance's estimate of £7,134,000 in the Budget statement, but £9,900,000.
That is very conservative of us.
I have no objection to your being conservative but I do object to being tricked and I object to the Dáil and the people of the country being tricked as well. If the Minister for Finance puts forward certain proposals of which he asks the Dáil to approve and subsequently, behind the backs of the Dáil without giving any hint of his intention of changing his mind, abandons those proposals and allocates to purposes of which the Dáil is not aware, the substantial sum of £3,000,000, the Government of which he is a member is open to criticism. Having regard to the fact that the additional cost of wheat in 1948 was not spread over the ensuing five-year period, will the Minister for Finance explain why it is that the cost of the subsidy in each case of the subsequent years exceeded instead of falling below £7,100,000, the figure which the Minister for Finance told us it would not exceed when speaking here in 1948?
The Deputy has heard of devaluation in the autumn of 1949.
Is that the explanation? Does it explain the 1949 figure? Remember that the figure £7,100,000 was based on three assumptions: that in each year part of the 1948 cost would be carried over; it was not carried over. The second assumption was that the cost of wheat would not fall below the 1948 average; but it did fall.
It fell below one dollar 80 cents when the exchange was four dollars 3 cents to the pound sterling.
The average price paid c.i.f. in 1948 was £33 10s. 0d. per ton while in 1949 it fell to £26.
And then we got devaluation and the price went up.
In the whole year 1949 all the wheat imported in that year both before and after devaluation averaged £26 per ton. There was therefore no attempt to carry over into the following year the excess costs from 1948. There was a substantial drop in the cost of wheat accompanied by a substantial drop in shipping freights, yet we find no corresponding drop in the cost of the wheat subsidy. I should like somebody to explain the reason for that.
Do you distinguish between green wheat and dried wheat?
Would the Minister make up his mind what Irish wheat costs?
It costs £29.
The Minister told us on Thursday last it cost £31.
According to the moisture content.
How much does it cost?
The Deputy should be making a speech; we do not want a conversation.
The Minister assured the House on Thursday last that the cost was £31 per ton. I quote column 1655. Deputy Aiken said that Irish wheat bought at £25 per ton was being turned into cattle food and the Minister said:—
"No, no. £31 a ton dried."
Ah.
I asked the Minister for Agriculture last year what Irish wheat cost delivered to the mills dried and he gave me a figure entirely different from that given now.
Read it out.
"Assuming that the average moisture content of millable native wheat delivered to the mills to be 22 per cent——"
I think that most farmers will agree that whatever figure last year may have been an average moisture content of 22 per cent. Would be unduly high——
You would be surprised.
"Assuming that the average moisture content of Irish wheat delivered to the mills would be 22 per cent. and the average moisture content of imported wheat 13 per cent., the cost would be £29 12s. 0d."
That is a long way below £31 a ton.
A difference of a few points in moisture content would account for the difference.
Assuming the moisture content of Irish wheat to be 20 per cent.——
Why make that assumption?
Remember that it is milled at 16 per cent. and the figure becomes much lower still. Dried to 16 per cent. moisture content, the average price of Irish wheat delivered to the mill would be £28 17s. 0d. a ton.
What is the point?
The point is that the Minister was trying to mislead the House last week when he said that the price was £31. Will he try to make up his mind what it does cost? We have the position that the original plan of spreading the high cost of the wheat subsidy in 1948 over a five-year period was abandoned and the whole cost was met in that financial year without the Dáil being aware of it; we had a fall in the cost of imported wheat in 1949, a fall undoubtedly subsequently arrested by devaluation, but which brought the average price for 1949 down to £26; we had a drop in shipping freights, but no drop in the cost of the flour subsidy and there should have been a substantial drop in the cost of the flour subsidy. The Minister set up a committee to report on the flour and bread subsidy with Mr. Lavery as its chairman and they, misled by the proposals of the Minister for Finance in 1948 and by some calculations made by the Minister for Agriculture, estimated that the cost of the subsidy should average between £5,000,000 and £6,000,000 a year. Why then does it cost £8,000,000 this year and why did it cost £7,000,000 last year? If there is an explanation I should like to hear it but nobody has offered any information.
You have it in your hand.
Even the arithmetic in that column is wrong. I do not believe that there has been this change in accountancy practice by which the cost of the wheat subsidy was voted only up to the 19th January and that it is now intended to extend it to the 28th February. The Minister has got to think of a more convincing explanation than that. Let me remind him that the Estimate was all wrong last year also. He asked the Dáil, 12 months ago, to vote an additional subsidy of £800,000 and on that occasion gave an entirely different explanation for the need of the additional amount to the one he is now giving. I suppose he thought that the one story would not get over twice. The explanation on that occasion was that the quantity of domestic wheat had been under-estimated. We have heard a lot of talk from the Minister about his ability to produce more wheat from a smaller acreage than Fianna Fáil could manage.
That is right.
In the course of the discussion on the main Estimate last year, on June 15th, he said that there was a substantial decline in the total acreage of wheat. He went on:—
"But, despite that fact, the delivery of wheat to the mills up to 29th April last amounted to 2,350,648 barrels as compared with 2,514,088 barrels last year off an acreage nearly 150,000 less this year than was laid down under wheat last year."
That was all baloney. The Minister for Finance can, of course, control the issues of facts from his Department. He can doctor those facts to suit whatever case he wants to make to the Dáil, but he will have to do something about the Government Statistics Office if he wants to sound convincing. Unfortunately for him, the Government Statistics Office is pouring out a volume of statistics which completely contradicts everything he says. I would prefer the Minister to interrupt me by speech rather than by facial contortion.
The quantity of wheat delivered to the Irish mills, according to the Statistics Office was, in 1949-50, 305,000 cwt. less than in 1948-49; and in 1950-51—the year in which the Minister was boasting that he was able to get such a larger yield of wheat from a smaller acreage than was possible under Fianna Fáil—it fell by a further 1,110,000 cwt. The fact of the matter is that, in last year, 1950——
This year finishing now?
This present year. The delivery of wheat to the mills was lower——
The Deputy is rambling. It is still going on.
A few thousand tons might still come in.
It is still going on. I have not got the figures for this year yet.
The Department of Statistics has estimated them.
Do not look so archiepiscopal. The Deputy knows that he has slipped on a banana peel. He should shake himself.
The fact is that instead of getting larger deliveries we get a supply more than 1,000,000 cwts. below the average for the past ten years, lower than any year since 1942, except one—1947, the year in which the wheat crop partially failed here and the whole of Europe, the year in which the Americans told us to eat maize and in which we got Argentine wheat instead.
What year is the Deputy referring to? It cannot be 1950, as we have not completed it yet.
The figures given on March 7th, by the Statistics Office.
Upper Mount Street?
By the Statistics Office, through the Taoiseach; he has never been in Upper Mount Street, except when visiting the British Representative.
What is the Deputy purporting to quote from?
The figures given in reply to a Dáil question last week by the Taoiseach.
As to the deliveries of the 1950-51 crop?
As to the yield of wheat as represented by deliveries to flour mills from the 1950 harvest. Is that clear?
Although the deliveries are not yet completed?
I am quite prepared to admit that a few barrels of wheat may yet come in and the Minister can have that, if he likes, to set against the decline of 1,110,000 cwt.
Perhaps the Deputy would give the reference to that question?
It was last Wednesday —or it may have been the previous week.
I would be much obliged if the Deputy would straighten himself, at his convenience.
It was given to me on March 7th.
I am much obliged.
The point I am trying to establish is that every single estimate in all the Minister's speeches, of the yield of wheat or the cost of wheat subsidy, has been proven in the event to be wrong, and fantastically wrong. Not merely that, but we paid out in 1948, £9,998,000 in wheat subsidy when the Minister for Finance framed his Budget on the assumption that it would be only £7,100,000. Not only was he wrong then but the Minister for Agriculture under-estimated it by £800,000 in the following year and during this year we find it under-estimated by £1,165,000. I suggest that, having regard to the conflicting and erroneous figures given to us as to the cost of Irish wheat, the cost of imported wheat, the yield of wheat from the Irish harvest, the delivery of wheat to the Irish mills and the quantity of wheat imported, we are forced to the conclusion that we can place no reliance whatever on any statement made by the Minister in that connection.
Would the Deputy refer me to the question he is purporting to quote?
Would the Minister read it?
It gives the particulars for the past ten years, showing 1948-49, 6,380,000 cwt.; 1949-50, 6,075,000 cwt.; 1950-51, 4,965,000 cwt. and there is an asterisk which indicates a note:
"Up to the 17th February, 1951, the latest date for which the information is available."
Does the Deputy think he is right?
I can concede that some quantity of wheat held by farmers for seed which will not be used for seed will be delivered to the mills between this and next June, but from my experience the quantity of wheat so delivered will not exceed 5,000 or at the outside 10,000 tons; and that does not invalidate my contention that the Minister's statement that he got delivered in 1950 from a smaller acreage more wheat than in previous years was fantastically inaccurate. There was a deficiency of 1,110,000 cwt.
There is a matter to which I want to refer, which may be of some delicacy, and if the Minister thinks that, in referring to it, I am prejudicing any national interest, I want him to intervene and tell me so. It was stated here by members of the Dáil last week that wheat is being crushed for animal feeding. In my time, when I was responsible for supervising wheat purchases abroad and the rationing of flour and bread supplies at home, there was an international authority controlling wheat exports. That international authority was particular in supervising the use of wheat by importing countries. When there was a suggestion that, even in spite of our regulations here and our efforts to enforce those regulations, some wheat was being used in this country for animal feeding, there was a threat that our supplies from abroad would be curtailed.
I do not know if that international wheat authority is still in existence. I do not know if there is any international body that cares a thrauneen what the Minister does with, wheat here; but I do know this, that the world wheat situation is tight at the moment and that it will be with difficulty that we will be able to get enough wheat to meet our requirements in this year. If there is any such international body now in existence, or if such an international authority is likely to be created in the possibly difficult circumstances of this year, then the knowledge that we were utilising wheat for animal feeding with ministerial authority may prove seriously detrimental to our interests.
We are facing this year the probability of another substantial drop in the Irish wheat acreage. I do not think even the Minister will contend otherwise. The fact that wheat is the crop which gives the poorest return to farmers at present prices and the sense of grievance because the Irish price is now well below the world price, will operate to discourage wheat growing and, as has been mentioned here, the Minister is taking no steps to sustain it. All the departmental propoganda is concentrated in favour of the production of other crops.
We are likely, therefore, to have from this year's harvest, apart altogether from weather conditions, a substantial diminution in yield and will be forced to rely more and more on imported wheat and to rely on getting that imported wheat in the restricted supply conditions now prevailing. Granted that these conditions may change if there is a bountiful harvest in the northern hemisphere this year, but if not, then we may have difficulty in meeting our full requirements; and these difficulties may be enhanced if there is any objection raised abroad by those supplying us with wheat or providing us with dollars to buy wheat, to the utilisation of that commodity for animal feeding in present circumstances. The Minister said here last year, when he made the change affecting pollard and decided to withdraw supplies of pollard from the compound feeding-stuff manufacturers and to utilise it for straight sale, that there was going to be a scarcity of pollard and that he was introducing a system of control which would ensure a fair distribution. I presume he is well aware now that there is no scarcity of pollard, that in fact the position has arisen that there is such a glut of pollard in the mills that some millers may cease production unless arrangements are made to relieve the pressure on their storage space. That is the position in a number of flour mills and I can state that on the best authority.
Deputy Cogan stated that the cattle would die of starvation for want of fodder.
Deputy Cogan's point is, and it is not an unreasonable one, that at the prices prevailing for the raw material and the finished products it is becoming increasingly unattractive to farmers.
No, his contribution was that the cattle would die of starvation for want of fodder.
I have no doubt, and those who informed me have no doubt, that in due time that congestion of corn offals will pass. It is not moving out now, and the congestion in some mills may necessitate the discontinuance of milling operations.
I hope Deputy Blaney will take note of that.
If the Minister would content himself with calm factual statements instead of these rhetorical excesses of his, the House would be much better informed as to matters upon which they must rely on the Minister for information.
There is an excess.
There is a congestion of corn offals in a number of flour mills.
Deputy Lemass should be allowed to make his speech without interruption.
The Minister is quite pleased about that. That is not what the Minister anticipated when he made the change and withdrew the pollard from the compound feeding-stuff manufacturers. He might now think it worth while to investigate why certain matters did not turn out as he seems to have anticipated. That is all I have to say on that subject.
There is one thing I want to say about this matter of the price of hides. The Minister is under the impression that this arrangement by which the export of hides is controlled and hides are sold to Irish tanneries at a fixed price is one designed to benefit the tanneries, the hide merchants and the boot and shoe manufacturers. It does nothing of the kind. The only basis for that situation is the prohibition on export which the Government is maintaining. If that prohibition was lifted, Irish hides would flow out of the country, and be sold at the prices now prevailing in scarcity conditions throughout the world. It would not affect the tanneries. The tanneries will be able to continue in production. It would not affect the boot and shoe manufacturers. They would be able to continue in production. It is true that the prices of leather and boots and shoes will go up. Certainly, if the Minister withdraws the prohibition, it will not hurt the Eire Hides Improvement Association. They would prefer to export their hides and cash-in on the scarcity prices prevailing rather than to be held by a departmental regulation to sell them to Irish tanneries at a fixed price.
The Minister is trying to ride away upon his usual device of attacking some group of Irish citizens and blaming them for the consequences of an act of his Government. There is no justification for it. If the Minister can persuade the Government to repeal the Order prohibiting the export of hides, that problem will disappear, and they will be lighting bonfires outside the offices of the Eire Hides Improvement Association and, inside, passing resolutions congratulating the Minister. Remember, that restriction was imposed as a protection for our citizens. It was a justifiable protection during the war at a time when there was a scarcity of leather throughout the world and when in Great Britain, not merely was that scarcity most acute, but the British Government was heavily subsiding imported hides. Is it suggested that we should have deprived ourselves of leather and footwear so that the hide exporters would be able to cash-in on these special conditions? We decided against that. We stopped the export of hides. We insisted that all the hides originating in this country would be sold to Irish tanneries to be tanned here and sold at a price which we regarded as reasonable.
5d. a pound.
The Minister can alter the price by a stroke of the pen tomorrow. Why does he not do it if he thinks it is unfair? There has been an increase under his direction since the change of Government. It can be increased again. But, when it is increased, let him not try to avoid the consequences. The consequence will be an increase in the cost of leather and, consequently, of footwear and other articles manufactured from leather. The tanneries would, if they could get them, prefer to use a much higher proportion of imported hides, because there are certain forms of leather which can be manufactured more economically from sun-dried hides than from the native hides available here. What the Minister is attempting to put over on the Dáil appears to be all nonsense. There is a situation there which the Government has created and is maintaining and the Government is trying to put the blame for the consequences of that situation upon some group of citizens who have nothing to do with it and who would be glad to see it ended. It is most unfair to attack the hide merchants in particular who protested strongly against the making of the Order controlling exports.
You are getting fond of them.
They never wanted the Order. They would have much preferred then, and would much prefer now, to be exploiting the scarcity situation all over the world, the same as the wool merchants are doing. If there is a reason for not doing it, state the reason fairly and stop abusing those citizens who are not responsible for what the Minister does. Is that not a fair statement of the position?
No; it is a fantastic perversion of the facts.
I repeat that those who trade in hides would much prefer to be allowed to export those hides because they would get a much better price for the hides abroad and would make a much bigger profit.
No.
Of course they would, unless they are as foolish in the handling of their business as the Minister is in handling his Department. It is dishonest to suggest that it will affect production or employment in tanneries or shoe factories, except to the extent that the rise in the cost of footwear may decrease demand. I think there is a good case for ensuring adequate supplies of hides to Irish tanneries at a reasonable price.
At whose expense?
I do not care at whose expense. The British Government did it by direct subsidy. If the Irish Government want to do it by direct subsidy, they can do it also. If they choose to do it in another way, it is a matter of Government policy from day to day; it can be changed from day to day. If the Minister wants to hit somebody for the consequences of a wrong policy, he will have to hit himself. I cannot see the reason for all his rhetorical denunciation of people outside the House because he is annoyed at the consequences of what he decided upon. There would be some sense in the Minister's remarks if he followed them up by announcing that the Government had changed its mind and had decided to reverse its decision. Apparently, the only sequel to the Minister's denunciation of this situation is to leave the situation unchanged, which seems to be next door to lunacy.
To a certain extent I am glad that Deputy Lemass raised this question of the increase in the subsidy for flour and wheaten flour. I am sorry he did not go a little bit further and tell us what his policy or the policy of the Fianna Fáil Party would be likely to be if they ever, God forbid, got back into power. Deputy Lemass can easily criticise, as can everybody else, the attitude and the policy of the Minister and statements made by him either inside or outside the House. Deputy Lemass defended the flour millers here to-day.
I did not say a word in defence of the flour millers. I want to know why they are being given more money under this subsidy than was originally estimated. If that is being friendly, the Deputy uses the term in a different sense from the one in which I use it.
I have a document in my possession which was presented to Deputy Lemass in April, 1932. Deputy Lemass welcomed the individuals who came to see him in April, 1932, with proposals for the nationalisation of the flour milling industry. Instead of putting into operation the nationalisation policy that he advocated and said he believed in prior to 1932, he poured tens of millions of pounds into the pockets of the Rank combine and other big flour millers in this country.
The Deputy seems to be very far away from the Estimate.
I suggest that if the policy advocated by Deputy Lemass before he came into office in 1932 had been put into operation by him when he was in office, we would not be confronted this year with an Estimate of this size. That is the point I am making.
You have had three years to act instead of talking.
I quote from a proposal made by the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union in which it was suggested:
"An examination of the flour milling industry in the Saorstát based upon the numbers and conditions of the wage earners employed at present compared with the past and the important place of the industry in the national economy and its vital necessity as an essential food-producing service, results in the conclusion that the reorganisation and control of the whole flour-milling industry must be undertaken by a national non-profit making association."
They then go on to give the details in support of their proposals. I suggest that if Deputy Lemass had given any consideration—I do not think he did— to the proposals that were welcomed by him in April, 1932, this country would have been saved tens of millions of pounds during the intervening period.
A Deputy
I doubt that.
I merely mention this in order to invite the Minister for Agriculture to have a search made in the files of the Department of Industry and Commerce to get the documents associated with that proposal and the further details that were given by the members of that deputation. I dare say the Minister for Agriculture can request his colleague to hand him over the whole file dealing with this proposal. I would encourage the Minister to give careful consideration to these proposals rather than to continue to pour out these millions of pounds on behalf of the taxpayers so that we may make more flour millionaires in this country.
Are you going to vote against this Estimate?
I would like the Minister, when he is replying, to relate the figure of £1,165,000, that he is now asking for to the Estimate under the same sub-head for the year ending 31st March, 1952, and to ensure that the subsidy for the year ending 31st March, 1952, will not exceed the figure of £7,000,000. In the original Estimate for the year ending 31st March, 1951, the Estimate shows that the sum estimated would not exceed £7,200,000. That figure has now been increased to £8,365,000. As the Minister knows, the Estimate under sub-head P for flour and wheaten meal shows a reduction for the current financial year of £200,000. If the figure of £7,000,000 can be regarded as a reliable estimate, then we will have a saving of £1,365,000.
That is about a quarter of £7,000,000. We are paying five quarters in this financial year and only four quarters for the coming year.
I would also like to know, if the Minister has the figures at his disposal, how many flour millers there are in the country who actually share in the huge amount doled out as a subsidy to the flour millers.
Thirty-six.
How many miller bakers are included in that figure because I suspect—I would be sorry if I were wrong—that the miller baker is getting it on the double.
I do not think you are far wrong.
That being so, I would appeal to the Minister to give serious consideration at an early date to the necessity for reorganising the flour-milling industry. I would encourage him to do so. If he has not all the data in the Department of Agriculture I wonder would he get hold of the file that is probably covered with dust in the Department of Industry and Commerce and look into the matter, not just for the purpose of putting into operation a policy of nationalisation but for the purpose of putting into operation a policy that will save the taxpayers from the huge sums that have been and are being doled out to the millers over a long period of years. There is no doubt but that Deputy Aiken, when he was Minister for Finance, must have found out something about the wealth of the flour millers, a small body of people who have become wealthy at the expense of the taxpayers.
The Deputy has been talking for the last three years instead of acting.
There is one matter that strikes me forcibly in connection with this Estimate. While a very substantial sum, amounting to £1,000,769, is required there are Appropriations-in-Aid of £300,000 and there are savings on other sub-heads of £1,400,000. It would be interesting to know where those savings have occurred. At whose expense have those savings been effected? I have a sort of suspicion— the Minister did not mention the matter—that a considerable amount of money was saved through cutting the grants about which the Minister talks so fluently when he describes all he is doing for the farmer. I hope that the Minister when he is replying will explain fully how he has saved this very large sum of £1,400,000.
Is it not set out on the face of the Estimate?
It is not. There are no details at all of the savings.
I will be very interested to hear the Minister.
If you had been listening to the debate you would have heard it.
Every time the Minister comes in here to discuss agricultural policy he discovers some atrocious plot against the people. Last week he discovered a potato plot in County Donegal. I would be interested to know whether he intends prosecuting anybody for their activities in connection with that very objectionable business, but I have a shrewd suspicion that the Minister's denunciations will go no further than this House. It is very easy to denounce people here. There is no penalty involved. Having discovered the potato plot last week, the Minister will probably discover a cabbage plot somewhere in Dublin next week and the week after he will discover some other gang of thieves who are preying on the people.
The Minister is always the "Great White Chief", defending the people's interest. Listening to him, one gets the impression that Dick Barton and Hopalong Cassidy are only trotting after him. He discovers criminals, bandits, highwaymen and racketeers everywhere. I do not think the people take the Minister very seriously now, but I do think that the Minister is abusing his function in attacking those who are not here to defend themselves. Possibly attack is the best defence. It would be very hard for the Minister to defend his policy in regard to many items included in this Supplementary Estimate.
I was amused to hear Deputy Con Lehane giving such a very plausible explanation as to why this butter subsidy is required. He said that the Minister underestimated our capacity for consuming butter. I wonder is that the whole explanation? The Minister knows, of course, that while our consumption of creamery butter has increased very substantially during the last few years our production and consumption of farmers' butter has decreased very substantially and continues to decrease. The Minister quite ruthlessly killed that branch of our agricultural industry. Having killed it, he is now able to show an expansion in the production of creamery butter. It is only natural that with more and more areas being brought within the scope of the creamery industry the production of creamery butter must increase, coupled with the fact that the last few years were favourable towards expansion. I can never accept the statistics presented to me in relation to the production and consumption of farmers' butter. I do not believe that the Minister can accept them fully either. Butter is produced and consumed in my house and no one has ever asked me how much butter is produced and consumed in my house. The figures given are merely the result of guesswork. I presume that it is the result of observation that the Department has estimated that the production of farmers' butter has gone down and is going down very rapidly. Indeed, one would not need to be an official of the Department of Agriculture to see that.
The fact that creamery butter is heavily subsidised and sold at less than the cost of production naturally tends to discourage the production of farmers' butter. That is why farmers' butter production continues to go down. I do not think the Minister, in making these wild estimates of the enormous increase in the consumption of creamery butter, has given full consideration to the decline in production, marketing and consumption of farmers' butter. I think the Minister should try to give a true picture of the position in relation to every branch of his Department.
With regard to the subsidy on wheat, there is one point to which I think the Minister should refer when he is replying. I refer to the enormous increase in the price charged for bran and pollard. I would like to have the figures analysed. They would show some profit being secured to the milling industry as a result of this increase. I know that whole wheat is being added to pollard. If the matter is carefully investigated it will show that the producer of bran and pollard is paying more than double what he paid a couple of months ago. Somebody must be getting an increased profit. That profit may be going into the pockets of Deputy Davin's friends or it may be shown as a saving on subsidy. I think the Minister should let us know the true position and explain why such a substantial increase has taken place in this important feeding stuff. This increase in the price of bran and pollard, together with the increase in the price of maize and other feeding stuffs, is literally crippling agricultural production. I think every Deputy must agree that from the very outset the Minister has blundered badly in relation to the production of animal feeding stuffs. He has brought the country to a deplorable position. He announced to the world, and to the Irish farmer in particular, that he would flood this country with cheap maize. For two years he preached that doctrine and drove the farmers out of tillage. For some unknown reason, he proclaimed that he would import unlimited quantities of maize at a reduced price.
At £20 a ton.
Whereas he now has to import it at almost £30 a ton.
He was going to import it and sell it to the farmers at £20 a ton.
Why not go to a back room and talk it out?
These promises were made in the very year that farmers had a tremendous supply of home-produced barley and oats. By the deliberate act of the Minister, he destroyed the market for oats and barley in 1948 and 1949, and now we have the position that we have to pay those enormous prices for bran, pollard and all types of feeding. The Minister cannot escape blame in respect of that transaction. We are dealing in this Supplementary Estimate with only a few specific items, and I do not want to discuss the Minister's entire agricultural policy.
It makes deplorable reading, and it would make deplorable listening if anyone were to recount his blunders over the past three years. It is true that within the last two weeks the Minister, while I was referring to wheat, snorted with indignation and declared that he was actually importing wheat cheaper than we are producing it. Questions have been asked since that, and information has been extracted from him, and we have found that, while we are paying £25 a ton for native wheat, we are importing wheat at £31 16s. a ton. The Minister quite brazenly swallows his own words in this respect. He has no shame. He has no apology to offer for the fact that he told me it was untrue, when I said that he was paying more for imported wheat than he was paying for native wheat.
Does the Deputy know the difference between green wheat and dried wheat?
I do not know what type of wheat the Minister was talking about when he said that he would not be got dead in it. It would not be green if the Minister were got dead in it.
That appeals to Deputy Aiken.
It would be a very foul-smelling type of wheat. In this Estimate, we are paying for the Minister's blunders in regard to wheat not so much for his blunders as for his prejudice against home production of wheat. That is an appalling position and it is one that it is very hard to remedy. The only thing this House can do is to vote against the Minister's Estimate at any time that an Estimate for his Department comes before the House. There is no use in talking to the Minister. He does not listen.
Deputy Brennan will want to be careful. Deputy Cogan is muscling in on him.
There is an agricultural consultative council but the Minister never calls it together.
Deputy Brennan is looking very vexed.
The Minister is deafened by the sound of his own voice and cannot hear the words of advice given to him by his friends. I intend to vote against this Supplementary Estimate. It is the duty of somebody to try to bring the Minister to his senses. The Minister does not mind when Fianna Fáil vote against him because he thinks they only vote against him because they dislike him. I do not dislike the Minister but I dislike his policy.
You like your seat in Wicklow and you hope to get Deputy Brennan's at the next election because you have lost your own.
I have held my seat in Wicklow for 13 years, in spite of the Minister and in spite of all the organised political Parties and I will hold it.
And you had not to run out of a constituency, like the Minister had to run out of Donegal.
Father Vesuvius opens his arms here.
If the Minister's policy is brought home to the people of Monaghan, I think his own seat will be in serious danger there and perhaps that is really what is alarming him.
My heart is bleeding for Deputy Brennan.
Mr. Brennan
Do not worry about me.
I do not want to hurt the Minister's feelings or to annoy him.
Deputy Cogan is muscling in on Deputy Brennan.
I am taking only a small part in this debate. The Minister has a habit of interrupting, by which he hopes to divert attention from any criticism that may be directed against his policy. Deputy Lemass complained of the Minister interrupting by facial contortions. I have no complaint whatever about any interruptions on the Minister's part. It does not help him in any way; it does not explain his failures; it does not explain why he is coming to this House to demand this substantial sum, a substantial sum which is not coming out of taxation but which is coming out of savings under other sub-heads, savings which, I venture to say, have been effected by drastically cutting down various grants that were provided for the farming community. I would be inclined to suspect that probably some of the savings come out of the land rehabilitation project. I would be interested to know if that is so because, so much has been said against farmers and so much has been said about all the money that we are drawing from the taxpayers, from the State, that the Minister should inform the public as to what money is taken back from the farming community. The substantial subsidies here, in regard to both butter and wheat, are subsidies, pure and simple, to the consumer. I do not think the Minister will deny that. They do not go to the farmer. But, in order to find the money for these consumer subsidies, the Minister is taking money that was originally voted for the farmers.
I had not intended to take part in this very intellectual debate between gentlemen who are financial wizards in their own particular sphere. I listened with interest to Deputy Lemass. Whatever points he made, undoubtedly, he presented them in a very proper manner, although, to my mind, some of them were not correct. Perhaps my mind may be wrong. In any case, it was a pleasure to listen to Deputy Lemass. Deputy Davin followed and gave very interesting facts and figures. Deputy Cogan started off with wheat and then went along to potatoes. I do not know if he mentioned exports. He did mention Dick Barton and Hopalong Cassidy. I was wondering if he would mention Superman, because he is not a bad replica of Superman himself. He blew in a window some time ago and he saved a Baltinglass lady. Superman did that a couple of weeks ago in the Sunday Press.
I would like to know from the Minister, again, to what extent profits have been made by the miller bakers. It is a fact that the miller bakers of Dublin can sell bread in Athy cheaper than they can sell it in the City of Dublin. That is a most amazing revelation. They can carry bread in their very nicely set out vans and sell it in Athy at ½d. a loaf cheaper than they can sell it in Dublin. I am subject to correction as to the price but I do know that they can sell it cheaper in Athy than in Dublin.
There must be something wrong as far as the subsidies going to these particular elements are concerned. Irrespective of what commissions we set up, I have an idea that the sooner we set up a Gestapo of some kind or another here to investigate these particular boys, as Deputy Corry is so anxious to call some people at times— I think he puts an "o" to it and makes them boyos—the better will it be for everybody. It would be a good job for the finances of the State and for the taxpayers generally.
We have a certain commission going all through the country at the moment with regard to wheat. If my opinion were asked, irrespective of what my colleagues would think of me—and I am a farmer, too—I would say that wheat is not a bad proposition at the moment. I think if the people who are advocating a particular line and creating this agitation would give their honest opinion, they would say the very same thing.
Comparisons have been drawn between imported wheat and our own wheat. I do not want to draw any unfavourable comparison, but facts are facts. Nobody can gainsay that before imported wheat goes to the rollers it must be sprinkled, whereas our own wheat must be kiln dried. There is a difference in that way, there is a reduction, and perhaps that reduction may more than equate the difference in price between the foreign and the Irish wheat.
With regard to the subsidies for feeding stuffs, I fail to see why there should be any such thing as a subsidy for feeding stuffs. We have the land and the machinery and we still have the horses. There were some people who laughed and jeered at the Minister for advocating machinery at one time. They have it themselves now and they speak very highly of it. We have the ground and the seed and why not grow our own feeding stuffs? Why be dependent on the Argentine, or wherever we get the maize from, when we can grow barley and oats in this country?
When we grew it we could not get a price for it.
Then why did you not feed it to your own stock? Apparently your national outlook is this, that if you can get foreign foodstuffs at a cheap price you will forgo the growing of your own native stuff.
If the Minister advises you to get it and that you will get it at a cheap price.
I am sure Deputy Cogan is not too susceptible to taking advice from any Minister. To my mind, he forms very strong opinions of his own, and rightly or wrongly, he stands by them—I must say that for him. I fail to see why any subsidy should be paid for imported feeding stuffs inasmuch as we have here a certain amount of arable land, and there is a particular variety of barely which I have known to be grown on land where, before this, barley would not stand up at all. I cannot give you the average yield to the acre, but I believe it is very satisfactory.
Surely Deputy Cogan will agree that a barely and oats mixture, with potatoes, is very good food for pigs, and for cattle also. The sooner this House and the particular community who are exploited here night after night realise that the cutting of the loaf is in their own hands, the better it will be for themselves and for the taxpayers. As regards maize——
Where is there anything about maize here?
Maize was referred to by Deputy Cogan a few moments ago.
That does not necessarily prove that it is in order to refer to it.
I do not want to cover all the realms of agriculture, but I thought I could follow along the lines mentioned by a previous speaker.
The Deputy is a countryman and he knows, if one sheep breaks out a gap, what follows. If one sheep breaks out of the field, what follows?
The rest of them go after it.
That is the trouble.
There was a very interesting discussion across the House between two foemen worthy of their steel—Deputy Lemass and the Minister for Agriculture—and I am sorry that Deputy Cogan entered on a line which was completely away from the form displayed by the previous speakers. I remember a famous guerilla leader in Cork who said that the war started with hurleys, but he thought it would finish with fountain pens. This debate started off with wheat, butter and the Faculty of Agriculture in the National University; it went on to hides and potatoes, and it finished up in a blaze of glory with Hopalong Cassidy. I do not see what bearing he has on the Supplementary Estimate.
A great resemblance to the Minister.
I would like to refer, first of all, to the dishonest manner in which the Minister put forward a certain statement here the other night in reply to Deputy O'Reilly. He said he got figures from Deputy Corry The figures he got from Deputy Corry were Professor Murphy's figures on the cost of milk Production.
How does milk enter into this? In what section?
I will tell you—subsidies and allowances for dairy produce. I think it is Q. It is only £3,000,000 now. There is a bit of a jump in it. The Minister has quoted those figures repeatedly in the House. It has been specifically stated as regards those costings, the figures given by Professor Murphy, that no account was taken, in giving those figures, of interest on capital or management charges or expenses. Further, those were the costings in 1946, which is a pretty long time ago, nearly as long ago as the days of Brian Boru—a favourite saying of the Minister. Since then the Minister has boasted in this House that he has increased the cost to farmers.
Is this not a consumers' subsidy?
It is a consumers' subsidy paid out of the Vote for Agriculture.
But it does not affect the price of milk.
When we produce milk, somebody consumes it and a subsidy is paid on it.
It does not affect the price of milk.
I wonder does it affect the price of milk? It has just as much effect on the price of milk as the Kerry cows the Minister is going to send to Donegal.
Would it not have to be butter, if the subsidy is paid?
Milk is converted into butter and the subsidy is then paid. I am dealing with the price of milk at the creamery before it is converted into butter.
This subsidy does not affect that price.
It certainly does, Sir. We are not in favour of giving a subsidy to have our butter sold at 98/- per cwt. less than the Danish Minister for Agriculture was able to get for his. It would pay the State to have the Danish Minister for Agriculture, if we have butter to sell abroad, to sell that butter for us and to give him a decent commission out of the 98/- per cwt. I am sorry the Minister has departed but when the Minister spoke here of Brian Boru so often lately I began to wonder if all this talk of Brian Boru had any connection with the Danish butter which he is importing now. I am absolutely convinced now that it has.
The Deputy is answering something that the Minister said on the Adjournment the other night.
I am answering something he said in the House last Thursday when he told us that there was never so much butter consumed in this country since the days of Brian Boru. He has told us that on a number of occasions. Bearing in mind all the questions that were asked in connection with this Danish butter and the complaints made by these people with the nice taste in Dublin, about whom Deputy Byrne and other Deputies were so troubled, the explanation occurs to me that, like a good general, Brian Boru kept his quartermasters' stores in his own tent at the battle of Clontarf, and when he was killed by Broder, Broder collared this parcel of butter and took it off to Denmark with him and it has been in cold storage there ever since.
You are a horse of a man.
Now, with the customary readiness of this Government to pay every robber willing to hand back to us something stolen from us in former years, the Minister went off and paid the Danes for butter that was stolen from Brian Boru in Clontarf and brought it back here to tickle the tasteful palates of the people of Dublin. That is the only way to explain the purchase of this Danish butter, because mind you, the Danes sold, for the first six months of 1950, 281,000 cwt. of butter on the continental market. The price ranged from 489/- per cwt. paid by the American forces, in occupation of Germany, down to 414/- per cwt. paid by the German people. He got 463/- per cwt. in France and he sold altogether 281,000 cwt. at an average price of 438/- per cwt. Our Minister went over, I might suggest dishonestly, carrying out the bluff that he had endeavoured to work on the farmers of this country, when he sold butter to Britain at £13 8s. 2d. per cwt. He sold 810 cwt. in 1950 and then came along to the Irish farmer and said: "I have increased your cost of production by something between 25 per cent. and 33 per cent. and now I ask you to take 2d. per gallon less for your milk, because I may have a surplus of butter and I must sell that surplus on the British market where the price offered is 271/- per cwt." He tried on that bluff and circularised every co-operative creamery in the country asking them to say were they prepared to do it on a five-year plan. Three creameries, according to replies which he gave in this House, said they would, on conditions. The Minister refused to tell us the conditions but he failed in that.
He still wanted to persuade the Irish farmers that there was a surplus of butter there. Deputy Lehane asked two questions here on the 29th March last. He asked the Taoiseach if he would state the total amount of creamery butter produced in this country and he was told 687,512 cwt. He then asked the then Minister for Industry and Commerce what was the total quantity of butter required to give an 8 oz. ration in this country and he was told 700,000 cwt. so that there was not sufficient produced to give even a ration to all the people. Yet the Minister in order to carry out his bluff, sold our butter abroad for a price of £17 odd per cwt. Then he went off and bought the butter about which I told you and which the Danes robbed us of at Clontarf. He bought that back from the Danes and paid them £18 16s. 0d. for it. He is a good salesman.
We are paying now for that transaction in this butter subsidy. I warned the Minister here 12 months ago and two years ago that he had killed grain growing in this country, that he had done his damnedest to kill beet growing in this country and that all that was left was the old cow, and that if he carried on the game he was playing the old cow was going the way of the wheat, the peat, and the beet—"God speed the day," as he told us then.
That was his attitude. Deputies in all Parties in this House with the exception of my beloved friend Deputy Dunne, have made appeals to the Minister to bring the price of milk up to the cost of production for people sending their milk to the creameries. If we were to pay 10 per cent. commission to the Danish Minister for Agriculture, hand over our butter to him and tell him to sell it for us at the price which he got for it on the Continent, we could pay from 1/5 to 1/6 per gallon for every gallon of milk that we send to the creameries in this country. The Minister for External Affairs is madly anxious looking for export markets. There is an idea for him. I am sure our ambassadors in those continental countries could sell our produce, as well as the Danish Minister for Agriculture, and could get that price for it. My point is that the subsidy is not half enough. If we are going to subsidise the consumers of this country to eat farmers' butter, why will they not pay the cost of production for it, and where is the idea of keeping three-quarters of our population as abject slaves? Deputy Dunne complains, in one way, about their wages, and I am complaining generally about their condition—of both the employer and the farm labourer. They have been brought to that condition by that bull-headed Minister over there.
The Deputy is now going outside the Supplementary Estimate. The condition of the farm labourer does not arise under it.
I know, and I do not intend to go into it. I am speaking of this additional subsidy of £500,000. That sum of money cannot be found on the side of the road. If I knew where it was, and could find it, I would be very glad of it. But there is a half a million of money involved in this matter alone. I can see no justification whatever for the Minister's attitude on this. He has not one leg to stand on on any side of the fence, except dishonesty and falsehood.
There is a sub-head dealing with agricultural schools and farms. We have a whole list of them here. Figures are given with regard to the general expenses of management of these farms. The general expense of managing our farm at Athenry is £6,200; for the farm at Ballyhaise, it is £2,800; for the farm at Clonakilty the figure is £2,850; the general expenses of managing Johnstown Castle are £2,000, and the figure for the Munster Institute is £4,800. Might I suggest to the Minister that he should add these figures to his price of 8½d. for milk and see where he will come out. I suppose the old farmer does not want anything to eat, that he can live in the nude, that he does not want anything for managing his farm, and he is clothed by the Minister, I suppose. I suggest that three of these farms be picked out by the Minister. Let him then put in a stock of those famous cows that he has, and give us the cost of the production of a gallon of milk on any one of these farms over a 12 months' period. I ask him to do that himself. Let him try out that game at our expense, or at the expense of the general taxpayer. When he has done that, he need not look for the figures which the County Cork farmers got from Professor Murphy in University College, Cork. I guarantee to him that the figures he will get will be an eye-opener for him.
The Minister knows well that, from May to October, the cost of the production of a gallon of milk at University College, Cork, was 1/3½ per gallon. Despite that, he got up here, with his tongue in his cheek, and talked about 8½d. per gallon. The Minister has before him definite knowledge that the price our butter could be sold for on the Continent is 438/- per cwt., and that that price allows 1/5 to 1/6 per gallon for milk. He is aware, from the costs of production before him, that the cost of the production of that milk in one of his great subsidised concerns is 1/3½ per gallon. I have not before me the famous figures which were quoted here of the cost of production in Grangegorman, but I am sure the Minister will have a more intimate association with that place later on.
They made a profit in Grangegorman of £2,500.
It would be enlightening if we could be told if they made that profit, based on the price and on the costs of the production of a gallon of milk as given in this House. There is also, in this Supplementary Estimate, a grant of £4,000 for the faculty of dairy science in University College, Cork. I am demanding that, in return for this sum of £4,000 which we are paying to the faculty of dairy science, they give us the cost of production per gallon of milk on the university farm in Cork. I think that is fair enough—and that it be placed on the Table of the House for the information of Deputies.
Will the farmers accept it?
We will, of course.
The cost of professors milking cows?
It is the students who milk the cows for nothing. I wish Deputy Dunne would take a trip down there and organise those fellows. He would have a great field for his activities. I am not prepared to agree to give the Minister something like £6,200 for managing a farm in Athenry, County Galway. If that was put on to the cost of production of farm produce, what would farm produce rise to? There are roughly, 150 acres attached to the Munster Institute in Cork and we are paying the management £4,800 for managing that 150-acre farm.
There is more than that in it.
Recently, we wanted a manager for a little farm at the mental hospital in Cork and the Department insisted on our paying him £800 a year for managing 123 acres.
The Department of Agriculture?
No.
Fixing the salary?
No. I am giving these instances to show the Minister——
I asked if it was the Minister for Agriculture who fixed that salary.
No.
Then it is not relevant.
But the Minister for Agriculture fixes this. And he goes up like a balloon. The poor devil in Cork, for managing 123 acres, gets only £800, while the joker looking across at him from the Munster Institute gets £4,800.
That is not strictly accurate.
I am sure that Deputy Cowan, with his wide knowledge of agriculture, will enlighten us on the accuracy of these statements. I should love to hear him. I admit that this gentleman is provided with a motorcar and I suppose he gets travelling expenses whenever he goes down to buy Deputy Halliden's bull or to Kerry to buy some of the Minister's Kerry cows.
With regard to sub-head I (1), which contains a provision in respect of the purchase of heifers, the Minister said, in respect of the farm at Grange last year, he did what I am sure Deputy Dunne fully and absolutely approves of, that is, he turned it into a ranch for bullocks. He reared bullocks, he said, last year on the Grange farm, and he is now embarking on a programme "for the elimination from the dairy herds of the country of uneconomic cows." He tells us also that he is going to have 800 heifers on the Grange farm. I think there are 632,000 milch cows in the country, and, according to his own figures, given in the course of attacks on Deputy O'Reilly and other farmer Deputies who spoke about the low yield of milk, the cow under 500 or 600 gallons is an uneconomic cow, so that all the cows of under 500 gallons are to be cleared out and all the farmers with cows under 500 gallons are to make for the Grange, Abbotstown and Clonakilty farms. They are all going to be inseminated and are all going to be in-calf and, when a farmer wants to get rid of one cow, all he has to do is to go down to Grange or Clonakilty and bring back by the horns one of the Minister's inseminated in-calf heifers that will milk 900 gallons at the first lactation.
And he will get it for nothing.
Yes; he will get it for nothing. I wonder at what period in our future history this scheme will be put into operation. Are these 800 heifers calved yet? Are they already in "suckies" anywhere in this land of ours, waiting to be picked up by the Minister? He surely will not inseminate them this year—he will have to wait a little—so that the earliest period at which this proposal of the Minister's can come into operation is about 1955 or 1956. There will be somebody else taking care of the Minister then.
The Minister wandered widely over all this range of subjects, but I should like to get from him some statement with regard to these enormous sums set down here as food subsidies on flour and wheaten meal. Statements were made here that, after drying Irish wheat, the price of it was £28 17s. delivered at the mill. We cannot find out at present what the price of imported wheat is, it is covered over so cutely with subsidies of all description, but roughly it is £33. That means that we are paying the foreigner an extra 100/- for every ton of wheat he sends to this country. We are paying the foreigner £5 more than we are prepared to pay our own farmer to produce wheat in this country.
Last week a very illuminating position was brought out as regards the sugar crop. There is no justification whatsoever for coming to the taxpayers of this country and asking them to pay more to the farmers of any other country for our essentials than we are prepared to pay our own farmers—and I respectfully suggest that wheat is definitely one of our essentials.
I am glad the Minister for Defence is present in the House at the moment because what I have to say now has a very direct bearing on his particular Department. When the Minister for Defence spends public money on the Army he sees to it that that money is well spent and that the Army is suitably equipped to make it a decent mobile fighting force. I am sure the Minister for Defence would not agree that that Army should find itself in the position that it would have to be sold by this Government to act for some foreign country in order that Deputy Cowan might be fed.
I might be sold in those circumstances.
Wheat has largely been an insurance policy with the people of this country—a policy under which we were always able to say: "Well, at any rate, we shall be able to feed the people." On that principle, we paid a higher price between 1932 and 1939 for wheat produced in this country than we would have had to pay for imported wheat. At the moment wheat is the cheapest grain produced in this country. To-day, the price of oats is somewhere around 40/- per cwt.: the price of barley is somewhere around 36/- ——
That is not in this Estimate.
——and the price of wheat is 25/-. We must keep these prices in mind now because the Minister for Agriculture is asking this House for a further £1,165,000 which will be paid not to our own farmers for growing wheat for us but to the foreigners. I remember the very happy statements we heard from these benches in 1939 and 1940: "Ah, all the wheat you require will be brought in in American bottoms."
That is for the main Estimate. General policy or what happened in 1939 does not arise on this Vote.
I am objecting on this Vote to an increase from £7,200,000 to £8,365,000 on the flour subsidy—an increase of £1,165,000. It is the largest sum in the Estimate. Is there any justification for a Minister for Agriculture to come to this House and look for that sum of money while, at the same time and in so far as he can do so, he is preventing the growing of wheat in this country by our own farmers? If an extra sum of £1,000,000 is to be taken from the taxpayers of this country, why should it not be given to our own farmers? What is the objection to doing so? Why should we hand over the whole of that sum of money to the foreigner?
The Deputy is repeating himself not once or twice but half a dozen times.
There is reference here to the Agricultural Produce (Cereals) Acts and to Emergency Powers (Cereals) Orders and so forth. We see that there is an increase of £5,000. For what? The original Estimate was £356,000, and it has gone up to £361,000. To whom is the Minister going to pay that extra £5,000? Is it to the joker who grew barely in Iraq and for which the Minister paid £26 10s.? I move to report progress.
Consideration of Estimate adjourned. Estimate to be resumed tomorrow.