Listening for a considerable time for the last few weeks one could be very much amused at hearing the Government supporters praising the Minister and the Department for the very good work they had done in the past year. I say we could be amused if the situation was not so serious. During the past year, the farming community has found that far from there being reason to congratulate the Minister or his Department the markets, which are the mainstay of the farmers, are in a chaotic condition. The egg market is something that is fast disappearing; the market for cattle is up and down, one day up and the next day down; and as everybody knows, a fluctuating market in live stock is anything but healthy for producers. At the same time we have ups and downs in the bacon trade and the pig trade. Taking those things together with the very definite downward trend brought about by the Minister and his Department in the price of wheat—because he is solely responsible for that decrease—I feel that there is very little on which to congratulate the Minister and his Department during this debate.
To listen to the other people who support the Minister—who, I suppose one might say, must support him in this debate—could be amusing, but unfortunately, it is not amusing for the general reasons I have mentioned. The year has not been a satisfactory one and there is no indication that the year to come will be any more satisfactory, so far as the farmers are concerned. We have heard much talk about the great job the Minister has done—and the Department, too—in regard to the land project, the lime scheme and the T.B. scheme, but we must also recall that there was a ground limestone scheme before the present Minister became Minister in 1948.
It is true that after 1948 the ground limestone scheme went ahead somewhat more quickly, but we must also remember that the limestone scheme had just been initiated by Fianna Fáil before they left office and they did not have any foreign money with which to boost the production of lime or pay for its distribution. Having got this money from abroad, the then Coalition Government and the Minister for Agriculture set about the limestone scheme as we now know it, but the figures that I would like to recall to the House, and to the people generally, show that despite this financial assistance obtained from abroad in order to finance the limestone scheme, when Fianna Fáil took over office in 1951 the total tonnage of lime supplied in the preceding 12 months was 75,000 tons.
Fianna Fáil were in office for almost three years up to 1954 and these people who are condemned for doing nothing and who according to some speakers on the other side of the House did nothing, with the same facilities in 1953 and 1954 as the Coalition Government had in 1949, 1950 and 1951, increased production and spreading of lime from 75,000 tons in 1951 to a figure of around 800,000 tons in 1954.
It is well to get clearly into the minds of the people just how this thing came around and to realise that while Fianna Fáil initiated the scheme in the first instance without any outside assistance, the present Minister and the Coalition Government in 1948, 1949 and 1950 had the assistance of outside money, and even with that outside money, and with the scheme already undertaken, all that could be produced by the Minister in 1951 was 75,000 tons. Fianna Fáil, in three years, pushed that up to 800,000 tons. So much for the praise of the Minister and the Coalition Government about what they did in regard to ground limestone.
We also had a good deal of talk on the other side of the House about the land project. We find again, in regard to this scheme that, before ever there was any land project mentioned, Fianna Fáil, within the limits of the resources at their disposal, had a farm improvements scheme, a forerunner of the present land project. No one can deny that scheme did quite a lot of good, and if it was the forerunner of the land project some credit should be given to those who initiated that scheme. In the year just passed, we find that the B scheme under the land project has not been going ahead as we might expect. We might ask the Minister, instead of congratulating him on doing a number of other things, why the B section of the land project is not progressing as it might. We might ask why the number of acres drained under this particular section of the land project has decreased by 3,000 acres approximately.
In asking that, we might be told that there was an increase, in the figure under the A section of the scheme, of 16,000 acres. Let me tell the House that is something which is not entirely due to the Minister or his Department. When Fianna Fáil were last in office, the then Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Walsh, realising that the maximum allowed per acre in grants under the A scheme was not sufficient —the figure of £20—had that figure increased to a figure of £30 or a maximum of two-thirds of the total cost, whichever was the lesser. It is directly as a result of that improvement in the financial arrangements of the A scheme under the land project that you have had during the past year an increase of 16,000 acres drained under that section of the scheme. It is, however, still to the discredit of the Minister and the Department that the B scheme is being put aside and that it has decreased by 3,000 acres in the same period.
In regard to the wheat position, we all know and we have heard much about it, that the price of wheat was reduced during the past year by the present Minister and that the farmers of this country actually lost anything up to £2,500,000 as a result. The reasons given by the Minister and the various spokesmen of the Government were that there were racketeers engaged in the growing of wheat to the detriment of our financial and national position and to the detriment of our economy generally.
I want to put it plainly to the Minister that, while that may be the view of himself and his colleagues at the moment, it is not the view of the wheat growers of rural Ireland, as shown just two days ago down in Laois-Offaly. I want to say to the Government that the reduction in the price of wheat was not only a bad day's work from a national and economic viewpoint but that the present Government must realise very forcibly to-day that it was also very bad from the political point of view.
As a result of the serious political position which has arisen due to the decrease in the price of wheat and in other items I will mention later, the Government might now well mend their ways and give an increase in the price of wheat. This increase will be well worth while, apart from the political aspect, because we have been importing wheat to the tune of £5,000,000. At the same time we have been running an adverse trade balance of many million pounds. We would not have had that adverse trade balance to the same degree as we have it to-day if that £5,000,000 worth of wheat had been grown in this country. It would have been grown if the price had remained at the same level. If the Government to-day is serious in the matter of redressing that trade balance, in looking after the interests of the farmers and keeping more people on the land, then surely, even now at this late stage, the Government will mend their ways and restore to the farmers of this country the price which they had been getting and to which, having regard to the many other increases in costs which have taken place since, they are most certainly entitled.
We might also mention that, in addition to the £5,000,000 in respect of wheat imports, in the past 12 months we have been importing cereals, including wheat, to the tune of £14,000,000 or £15,000,000—cereals including wheat, which we could well grow at home, which should be grown at home, and which we should like to grow at home, The Minister may well say in regard to certain of these cereals outside of wheat that he has done, for instance, a good day's work in regard to the growing of barley, that he is encouraging the growing of barley in the coming year by suggesting that there will be a guaranteed market. I remember distinctly that on this same Estimate last year we were given to understand that there would be a similar guaranteed market for oats last year. The oat guarantee scheme did not work. I tried to indicate to the Minister on this Estimate last year that it would not work and that there was no proper provision made for its working. It is only too true that that was so.
We had in my county, which is a very large oat-growing centre, a chaotic market in regard to oats, which is a cash crop grown by our farmers. At times one could not get the crop taken away at any price. Another week, one might have a fair price but, generally speaking, there was no guaranteed price and no guaranteed market on which the farmer could sell during the past months. The Minister should bear this in mind in the coming year when talking about a guaranteed market for barley. Where is he going to purchase the barley at a guaranteed price? Where is it going to be stored? What sort of agency will be responsible for the taking up of surplus barley in the counties which grow it? How will the barley be distributed to the counties which require it as a feeding stuff? The Minister must regulate these things if the guaranteed market for barley is not going to be the flop that the guaranteed market for oats was last year.
The farmers have been fooled in the past but they will not be so easily fooled in the future by any grandiose proposals made in this House on the spur of the moment or during a debate on any Minister's Estimate. They are not going to be led into sowing their land all around in barley because the Minister has said: "If you grow barley you will get a guaranteed price". They are becoming a little wiser in that respect; they do not take that type of proposal seriously any more.
The farmers no longer have sufficient confidence in this Government to take any of these proposals at their face value and, as well as that, they are not inclined to take, from the present Minister more so than from any other Minister, promises of this kind. They are not inclined to take them from a Minister who recently told them that, if they could not grow wheat at a profit under the present price, they should go back to school. That type of talk from a responsible Minister to the farming community is not good enough. It is on the farming community that this country depends for its very life and for its very economic existence. Surely, in a previous term in this Government, the Minister should have learned his lesson and should have realised that, when he is talking to the farmers of this country who have to work and earn their living the hard way, he is not talking to a lot of school children.
In his reply, the Minister, in relation to this question of barley, should give an indication as to whether there will be a central purchasing agency for barley for the coming year's crop, the type of storage facilities that he proposes to make available for the gathering of that crop, the method of distribution to the consumer and the minimum price that will be paid. That is the very least the farmers are entitled to know. I think the Minister would be behaving very badly towards our farmers if he would not at this stage go further than saying: "You are going to get a guaranteed market next year." If he is serious in the matter, he must give that information; and if he does not give those particulars, then one can assume that he is not serious in regard to this matter and that the proposal to give a minimum guaranteed price next year for barley is purely something that is being thrown out at the moment in order to keep a section of our tillage farmers quiet.
When we consider the question of the bovine T.B. eradication scheme, we see that this is a necessary scheme, one for which the Fiana Fáil Government must be given credit in regard to their part in it, whether or not those on the Government side of the House like it. There is no use in people on the Government Benches standing up and talking as if this T.B. scheme were solely the brain child of the present Minister for Agriculture. That is not so. It is a fact that, before the present Minister for Agriculture came into office, the T.B. scheme had actually been drawn up and the only thing lacking at that stage was the sanction of the United States Government, which is, in fact, providing the money for this very necessary scheme. We should not forget that this scheme was drawn up and brought to the point where it could go into operation but was awaiting sanction. That was done by Fianna Fáil.
In our praise of the Minister to-day, we should consider the situation in the light that the Minister had only to get the sanction and carry on the scheme. Remember that that scheme was formulated by Fianna Fáil and that the money to implement the scheme is coming out of the Grant Counterpart Fund provided by the United States Government. That is the position in regard to the T.B. scheme; and we should have no more of this propaganda disseminated here and elsewhere to the effect that credit for the scheme is due solely to the present Government.
In regard to the cattle trade, during the past year the Minister in talking to the farming community and to the public generally must think he is talking to a lot of children, when he tries by all the tricks of his oratorical prowess to impress on the public generally that the Irish Press, and the Irish Press alone, was responsible for the bad market during the past few months in relation to our cattle trade. Surely the Minister is not so daft as to try to put that one across. Surely his colleagues in the Government cannot be so lacking in intelligence as to believe that the country generally, and the farmers in particular, will swallow that, or that any amount of repetition will make them believe that the Irish Press was responsible for this situation. Surely they will not try to ram that down the throats of the people; surely they will not try to make the people believe, by saying it often enough, that the Minister had no part in this; that he was the wronged party; and that the Irish Press went out of its way to damage the cattle trade and our national economy generally to the detriment of our farmers' income. Surely the members of the Government, excluding the Minister himself, and their supporters are not so far gone that they will grasp at this straw now in an effort to keep themselves afloat.
We all know that, during the past year, were it not for the healthy cattle trade that we had, the country would have been sunk beyond any possibility of refloating. In that set of circumstances, it is fantastic to find some paper held out as responsible for trying to sink the country by wiping out the cattle trade through the medium of false reports. The reports were true, only too true unfortunately. Every farmer knows they were true. If one takes up the National Farmers Journal, a paper which cannot be said to hold Fianna Fáil political views, what does one find? One finds, as Deputy Walsh has already pointed out, that that journal carried reports identical to those in the Irish Press. It would be the height of lunacy for anybody to suggest that the National Farmers Journal was trying to sabotage the cattle trade. The National Farmers Journal is representative of the farming community. It is fantastic to accuse the Irish Press but it becomes sheer lunacy when one remembers that the National Farmers Journal carried identical reports; and the reason why those reports were carried in both those papers was that they were true. That was the real reason, and a sad reason it was.
The Minister came along then—I think there were some by-elections in progress—and his advice was: "Hold your cattle until the month of April." Now, that is all very fine. I agree with the Minister, with one reservation, that it was quite all right to take the chance and hold one's cattle until the month of April in order to get a better price. An improvement generally takes place at that time of the year. That was all very well for those who can afford to hold their cattle, who did not need the money badly at the time; but there are numbers of farmers who must sell for financial reasons. There are numbers who must sell because of lack of feeding, farmers who buy their cattle in the late autumn and who finish them on hay or silage. Surely it would be madness to hold well-conditioned animals from the month of January to the month of April in order to get a better price. What one gains on the swings one loses on the roundabouts. Surely the Minister was stretching his imagination to an unprecedented extent and belittling the intelligence of the farming community when he advised all and sundry, without any reservation, to hold their cattle—not to mind the Irish Press— until April, when they would get a good price.