I move—
That the Dáil, at its rising this day, do adjourn until Wednesday, 12th February, 1958.
Committee on Finance. - Adjournment Debate: Government Policy.
There are certain observations which I think fall to be made on this motion. Last March is now well nigh nine months gone by, and in that month there was a general election, in very special circumstances. The inter-Party Government were then in the process of completing, and had virtually completed, the steps necessary to restore the balance of payments situation. It is important to recall with very special clarity the reasons why, in the judgment of the inter-Party Government, it was a matter of vital interest to this country that the balance of payments situation should be brought into a proper condition. The alternative to taking the measures requisite to restore the balance of payments position was the prospect of mass unemployment, in circumstances when the Government would not have at its disposal the resources necessary to protect the bulk of the employed people from the consequences of such unemployment.
It was with the primary purpose in mind of protecting the employment of the working people, that we made up our minds that, whatever the cost, we must create a favourable balance of payments, and to that end take such measures as might be necessary to restrict the inflow of imports while the flow of exports was expanding. We would thus provide the foreign exchange which we require to purchase the essentials without which we could not do, if the standard of living of the people is to be maintained, and purchase the raw materials essential to the maintenance of employment for our industrial workers.
I believe that the facts demonstrate that, by the time March last came, the necessary things had been done—exports were expanding and imports were contracting to such good effect that, in the first nine months of this year, for the first time since 1946, we had produced a favourable balance of payments in the trade of this country.
In that election period last March, Fianna Fáil gave sweeping undertakings all through the country, of what they proposed to do to put an end to unemployment and emigration. I remember two placards. One was: "Let's Get Cracking; Vote Fianna Fáil"; and the other, I think a very indecent placard: "Housewives, Vote Fianna Fáil and Get Jobs for your Husbands."
Perhaps the Opposition has leant backwards to excess in its restraint during the last nine months, in not pressing the Government to say what they had in mind when they put up those posters. But now I think we would be lacking in our duty, on the eve of the Christmas adjournment, if we did not ask the Government to tell us what they intend to do. I am obliged to say that the impression I have got during the last nine months is that the Government has gone to sleep. Is there any precedent in the recollection of any Deputy in this House, for a new Government to be in office for nine months and have presented to the Dáil nothing but Bills which were left in print by their predecessors? The public may not be aware of that fact, and the public may be surprised that debate in the Dáil has not been more active and vigorous during the last nine months, but the reason is simply that all the legislation which has been presented to this House in the last nine months was prepared by the inter-Party Government.
The last matters with which we have been dealing were the Agricultural Institute Bill, which is identical with that presented by me to this House in December, 1956, and the Transport Report which, as Deputies know, was prepared by a commission set up by the previous Government and every other Bill has the same provenance. Am I not entitled to ask the Government what they have done or what they propose to do to realise the undertakings given by them? We told the people what we intended to do and, let it be perfectly clear, the people rejected us in favour of what Fianna Fáil proposed. It is relevant to recall that since that, general elections have been held in Holland, Canada, Finland, New Zealand and France, and in every one of them the Government that held office was put out. There was a change of Government. None of us are in a position to prophesy, but it would be a brave man who would lay much money on the existing Governments in certain other countries, both to the right and to the left of us, if they were called to face the electorate at the present time.
It is so easy for an Opposition, when a Government is taking steps to restore equilibrium in the economy, to enter the arena and promise to reverse the necessary measures that are being taken and to perform miracles overnight. But the day of reckoning comes and the day of reckoning has come here when I am entitled to ask what has become of the Fianna Fáil plan that was to prevent the rise in the unemployment figures which has been going on for the last four or five weeks. What are the Fianna Fáil plans to prevent emigration which has been going on on a scale as great or greater than it has ever gone on before? Our plans were clear and defined and I propose to refer to some of them here to-day and to invite Fianna Fáil to set against them what their programme is because, for good or ill, they are the Government until such time as the electorate in by-elections reject them. So long as they retain a majority in this House and choose to use it they remain the legitimate Government of this country, but Parliament has the right to hear from the Executive what the Executive proposes to do.
Part of the Fianna Fáil positive declarations since they have taken office has been represented by the contributions of the Minister for Lands, and is revolting propaganda, that the capital expenditure in this community over the last ten years has been a waste of national resources. I want to describe that campaign of the Minister for Lands as revolting irresponsibility. Some of us here remember the conditions in which this country was when we took it over in 1922. I want to recall the offensive patronage with which certain people used to refer to dear, dirty Dublin. And it was true of Dublin as I remember it as a child. The very part of it in which I lived, North Great George's Street, was a part to which you were ashamed to bring a stranger because you had to lead him through such slums as were hard to reproduce in any other city in Europe. Those slums are gone. I think of Hardwicke Street when I was a child. Go up and look at it now. Substituted for the festering slums in that street are now some of the most modern flat buildings in the world. I think of Temple Street, of Lower Gardiner Street, of Gloucester Street, of all the areas in Dublin where there were people living two and three families to a room. Those buildings are all gone and their place is taken by housing on which we spent, even in the last ten years, £100,000,000.
I think not only of Gardiner Street, Dominick Street, and those other areas but of the country towns of Ireland. I think of the town where I live where, when I was a child, half the houses were thatched houses and many of them houses consisting of one or two apartments. They are all gone and in their place are houses where any man could rear a decent family with reasonable amenities for decent people. Quite apart from what was laid out in the early years of the State, in the last ten years £100,000,000 has gone into changing the housing conditions of our people. Can that expenditure be legitimately described by the Minister for Lands or anybody else as slush? Do we regret that expenditure? Are we to hang our heads for shame on account of it? Are we to proclaim before the world that that outlay of our money in taking our people out of the slums was slush? I do not think it was and I want to say with the fullest sense of responsibility and with the full authority of the Party to which I belong that if we had to do it again we would spend every penny of it.
What is the Taoiseach laughing at?
It is not enough for the Taoiseach to laugh. The Taoiseach is always extolling the monolithic character of his Government. His Government is not a coalition, but it is an old gag of the Taoiseach that he gets up with patriarchal benevolence to say things quite pleasant but there is always Deputy Corry, Deputy Childers or somebody else to do the dirt. I want to know does the Taoiseach stand over the campaign which the Minister for Lands is running in the country at the present time, that this money expended on housing was slush?
Who spent money on housing?
I am indicting the campaign of the Minister for Lands.
Fianna Fáil spent money on housing.
Leig dó.
Remember I am addressing the monolith which speaks with one voice, which is contaminated by no fission of coalition minds. I am addressing the Government, one of whose Ministers is campaigning through the country on the proposition that any financial complications into which this country had found its way are due to the reckless and improvident dissipation of our assets.
He did not use the words.
Wait a moment.
Quote.
We have progressed somewhat. At least we have got them to repudiate each other. It is for that reason I have brought the matter before the House. I wanted some member of the Fianna Fáil Party to hear his own heart, to speak about his own colleague, the Minister for Lands.
Quote his words.
We shall come to the next statement. We——
Who are "we"?
The inter-Party Government of which I was a member. I mention now one scheme with which the Taoiseach had nothing whatever to do, the £9,000,000 spent on the farm building scheme.
We had, of course, farm building schemes.
So much the better. He is coming around. He was standing back to back with me last week. He will be standing with his arm around my neck this week—a very embarrassing proceeding for both of us—but it is very desirable if I can bring common sense to the benches opposite by the process of debate. That is what Dáil Éireann is for. We spent £9,000,000 on the farm building scheme since 1949. Now the Taoiseach says that is their scheme. All the better. Let him tell the Minister for Lands not to go down to Kilkenny and describe it as slush. We spent, in the last seven years, £6,000,000 on the ground limestone scheme.
Deputies
Hear, hear!
Was that slush or was that improvidence? Was that the Taoiseach's scheme?
It was very much yours I admit.
There is a limit to his audacity. We spent the money necessary to plant 90,000 acres of forest since 1948. Was that slush? It was a very large capital investment which provided employment for our people and which will provide revenue when the forests reach maturity.
We spent £12,000,000 since 1948 on the extension of the telephone service to the remotest parts of the country. I can see somebody here, with some shadow of justification, saying: "You could have got on without the telephone." I do not think anybody living in rural Ireland will share that view. It has made a great difference to the people living in rural Ireland to reach the priest, doctor or nurse when they need them.
We initiated the scheme and we spent most of the money. I defy contradiction.
Go and tell that to the Minister for Lands.
We initiated the extension of the telephone scheme.
We extended rural electrification to every part of Ireland. Was that slush?
There is no good in trying to twist the argument at all.
Since 1948 we have spent millions——
We have.
——on the building of hospitals and sanatoria.
We have.
I remember, when we began that, in rural Ireland if one wanted to get a T.B. child out of the house one had to go hat in hand and sometimes wait six months to get a bed into which the child could be put and, in the meantime, the rest of the family was infected. We started the programme of providing sanatoria accommodation which is available in this country now.
That is a deliberate falsehood. No, it is not a deliberate falsehood; the Deputy simply does not know what he is talking about.
The Deputy does not care.
I always remind the House that when the Taoiseach wants to deal in dirt, Deputy Corry or Deputy MacEntee is sent for and echoing my words, no sooner are they out of my mouth now, than who sails in but Deputy MacEntee. I do not know what he is Minister for.
I want to recall the fact that we built the sanatoria that were not there, and we built them to the point at which we have more accommodation now than we require for the patients. When we embarked upon that scheme we deliberately set out upon a programme to build more sanatoria than we would require, in the conviction that there was no other way to bring the plague of T.B. in this country under control. Our aim was to put standing derelict sanatoria all over Ireland, which would no longer be required when we had our job completed. We have equalled the record of the State of New York in which at the present time 50 per cent. of the sanatoria there are idle for the want of patients to go into them. I want to know does the Minister for Lands consider that slush? If he does, I want to know what value does he set in cash on the lives of the children that did not die because we provided the sanatoria to secure that they would not die, because we provided the hospitals without which they would have died.
I notice with interest that, when this matter is raised in a concrete form in Dáil Éireann, Fianna Fáil are ablaze to repudiate the Minister for Lands, but the fact remains, while the Taoiseach repudiates him in Dáil Éireann, he is sent around the country to repeat that falsehood and utter that slander at dinners, luncheons, banquets and wherever he can get a dog fight assembled to listen to him. I have been raising these categorical matters here and have challenged the Party of which he is a member, and the Government to which he belongs, to the point of repudiating him.
He is doing a darned good job in Fisheries that you did not do.
The exceptional emphasis of the Deputy from Donegal may be of some value. If the Deputy can persuade the Minister for Lands to return to Billingsgate he will do less harm in Billingsgate than he will do here.
He is doing a good job.
I do not know what good the Deputy is doing here by repeating that kind of cod.
He is doing a good job.
Deputy Brennan will get an opportunity of making his own statement in an orderly fashion.
I shall be glad to hear from the Fianna Fáil Party, or any member of the Government, what was wasted? What part of that outlay do you agree with the Minister for Lands was improvident dissipation of the resources of this country? I think it was all well spent and I think I shall be able to demonstrate it was well spent because part of that expenditure, to which I have not yet referred, was involved under the land project on foot of which we have added 1,000,000 statute acres to the arable land of this country. Is that slush? It was slush before we started on it. Most of it was marsh and bogland but it is growing good crops and carrying stock to-day to the great advantage of the country in many forms. If it were not doing that, our economy would be very different to what in fact it is.
I hear no words from Fianna Fáil as to what their policy is for increasing production. I did hear 18 months ago from Fianna Fáil what their policy for increased production was. Do any members of the Fianna Fáil Party remember the dinner in Clery's Restaurant where Deputy Lemass, the present Tánaiste, turned up and outlined a scheme involving the borrowing of £100,000,000 which was to be spent on increasing production in Ireland? What has become of that scheme? Why do we never hear anything about it now? He is Tánaiste in this Government. Has he dropped it and, if he has, what is the alternative proposal of the Government of which he is a member? Deputy Lemass is Tánaiste, Deputy Prime Minister and Deputy Head of the Government. I notice he comes home from his discussions in Paris on the Free Trade Area and the Common Market and I am quite at a loss to follow what Deputy Lemass, the Tánaiste, is saying. On his return from Paris, he announced quite casually that agriculture was to be included in the Free Trade Area. On the following morning, the Prime Minister of England, Mr. Macmillan, appeared to use language, as reported in yesterday's Manchester Guardian, indicating that Great Britain had no intention of including agriculture in the Free Trade Area.
I think the time is overdue when the public of this country should be taken into the Government's confidence and let know what is the position in regard to Ireland vis-à-vis the Free Trade Area. Without the information, I am not in a position to offer any opinion, but I think it right to remind the Government again of what I tried to remind them on an earlier occasion: the keystone of Irish diplomacy is the vital interest of Ireland. I should like to know what this Government considers to be the vital interest of Ireland. I would ask them to bear in mind that under the 1948 Trade Agreement Ireland at present enjoys a link in price between cattle in Great Britain and store cattle here which could make a difference at certain times of the year of up to £20 a head in cattle; Ireland enjoys under the 1948 Trade Agreement a preference at present in respect of butter worth approximately 30/- per cwt.; and in respect of bacon, a preference worth anything from 25/- to 30/- per cwt. I would urge the Government very strongly that these very special considerations be borne in mind and that these very desirable assets, which we at present enjoy, will not be lightly relinquished, unless a very substantial quid pro quo is available.
Now, I do not think it would serve any useful purpose to challenge the Government in being as to what its programme is, if we, on this side of the House, were not prepared to give some indication of what our policy is for increased production in this country, and I want to reaffirm on this occasion that we have a policy for increased production and that we believe it is a good policy. We believe it has been tested and can be checked on its results. We want to put it on the table now and invite Fianna Fáil to say what its alternative is, or in what respect it proposes to depart from the policy as laid down by us.
Our policy for increased production in agriculture is substantially based on nine propositions: (1) the land project, in order to restore fertility to that part of the land of Ireland which has become infertile, through neglect, and the reclamation of which is beyond the capacity of those in whose ownership it is, without State assistance; (2) the lime scheme, under which 1,000,000 tons of lime are being annually applied to the land of Ireland —an application which could, with great advantage, be doubled if we could persuade the farmers to do so; (3) the removal of the Fianna Fáil tax of 20 per cent. which they put on superphosphate and which we removed in order to expand the use of phosphates on the land of Ireland. The Taoiseach appears to dissent from that proposition.
I am merely laughing at the adroitness with which the Deputy claims for himself things that were done by others.
Let us pinpoint it.
It is all right.
But the Taoiseach must not, if I may respectfully say so, intervene with a subtle observation: "All right, we will drop that." We will not drop it. I have no intention of dropping it. The Taoiseach is quite amused at my reference to the removal of the Fianna Fáil tax of 20 per cent. on "super" and he says it amuses him the way the Deputy claims credit for doing what others, in fact, have done.
Not that. It was the whole story.
Not that. You see, this laughing applies to something else, but not that.
It was the whole story.
We are back again, you see. He agrees Fianna Fáil put a tax of 20 per cent. on "super" and we took it off. At least he will agree that is the true version; they put the tax on "super" and we took it off. I consider that to be a very vital contribution to the policy of increased production from the land of Ireland because lime and phosphate are the two great desiderata for the land of Ireland, both grassland and tillage.
No. 4 is the farm building scheme, under which we have provided the farmers of this country with facilities to modernise their farm buildings and to bring water to their farm kitchens.
No. 5 are the soil-testing facilities which are being availed of to-day at the rate of 100,000 soil samples per annum. Do I detect a smile on the face of the Taoiseach?
I am thinking of the bicycle wheel.
Yes. Let us tell that tale again, because I want to tell the House that it would not be fair for Fianna Fáil to say that there were no soil-testing facilities when they left office in 1948. There were, and they were located in Ballyhaise.
We heard that before.
The Deputy will hear it again. They were located in Ballyhaise. There was a laboratory in Ballyhaise, a dreary kind of a room, but it was a room, and it had a roof on it, and in that room there was one man and one boy, and in their persons were concentrated the entire soil-testing resources of the Irish nation. Their equipment was of an arresting character. It consisted of a disused medicine bottle, tied to a discarded bicycle wheel, revolving on a fourpenny nail, and the little boy's job was to spin the wheel with his finger. Those were the entire soil-testing resources of this country in February, 1948. We have to-day in Johnstown, in the new soil-testing laboratory which has been completed there, the most up-to-date soil testing service in the world, and it is dealing with 100,000 samples per annum for the farmers of this country.
I have referred to the seventh point of the programme on which our policy for expansion is based, that is, the 1948 Trade Agreement. The eighth point is the parish plan. There is a history to the parish plan and to me it is quite a fascinating history. When the Taoiseach speaks in public, he is all for the parish plan. He thinks it is a splendid plan economically, socially and in every other way, but when Deputy Moher goes to the Cork County Committee of Agriculture, he is quite determined that the parish plan will not work.
To give them a maternity nurse out of agriculture.
I am not putting Deputy Moher in the same category as Deputy Corry or his leader, the Minister for Health. Their function is to throw the dirt; Deputy Moher's function is to throw the spanner into the works. It is always a clean and shining spanner and it is always most politely thrown but it is thrown for the same purpose of gumming up the works. It achieves its purpose. I issued a challenge before and I do so now again in respect of the parish plan. I invite any honest Deputy, and there are some honest Deputies, to judge the parish plan, not by the best group of three parishes, but by any group of parishes. Take the worst group of all and I say it demonstrates the benefit to the people it is to have an agricultural adviser for every group of three parishes covering approximately 1,000 farms.
I am convinced that any rational Government will come to the conclusion that, given a fair chance, it would be money well spent to intensify that service and provide one parish agent for every rural parish in Ireland. I suggest that in all the schemes I am outlining as being an effective programme for increasing agricultural production no element is more important than the parish plan and the provision of an adequate advisory service for those who have to make their living on the land.
We provided, for the first time in the history of this country, a guaranteed minimum price for pigs and for feeding barley. I think it is right that the Government and the country should know the result of that. Two years ago, we prescribed a minimum price for pigs. We did that by making a levy per pig on every pig that went into the curer's factory and by giving a guaranteed price to every curer who exported bacon from this country. As a result of that policy, it has been possible for us to maintain for our farmers a stable minimum price for Grade A pigs over the past two years; and for the past three, four or five months, we have been able to maintain a price of 235/- for Grade A pigs although during some of that period, bacon has been selling in London at 230/- and farmers in Denmark have been accepting 150/- for their pigs. To that stabilisation scheme, the Exchequer is committed to a contribution of £150,000 per annum. It is a scheme under which the guaranteed minimum price for Grade A pigs cannot be changed without six months' notice to the producer. The existence of that scheme has made it possible to provide a guaranteed minimum price for feeding barley, with the result that in this year it is estimated that there were 400,000 tons of barley produced in this country.
Our ninth plank is the scheme introduced by us in 1954 for the eradication of T.B. in cattle. I hope that scheme is being pressed forward as I think it ought to be. I do not want to underestimate the difficulties of any Minister for Agriculture in dealing with this matter, but I like to recall that when I brought in the scheme in Dáil Éireann, although it was not opposed, some Deputies from Sligo expressed concern that their county and County Clare were to be the first two counties which were to have intensive attention under the scheme. I said on that occasion that the people of Sligo would live to bless this plan because, when they became an attested area, people would come to buy their cattle from every part of Ireland.
That is nonsense.
Deputy Moher is wrong. Let him take a little trip to Sligo and ask the people what they are getting now for in—calf heifers compared with what is being given in any other part of the country.
I will deal with that afterwards.
This much is certain now that, whether we like it or not, the tuberculosis eradication scheme must be pressed forward. Our aim ought to be to get the country cleared in 1960. I doubt if any Minister could achieve that aim, and I will not deride any Minister for Agriculture who fails to achieve that aim. However, that ought to be the aim before him, and the nearer we can get to that date, the better it will be for our economy as a whole. If we have an abrogation of the 1948 Trade Agreement without an adequate quid pro quo, or the loss of the British market through failure to eradicate tuberculosis in our live stock, there is not a living person in the Republic whose standard of living will not be very substantially and immediately reduced.
In evaluating any policy, we must ask ourselves what are the results of that policy. It is by that test that I would like to challenge Fianna Fáil. I am able to apply the test of results only to Fianna Fáil policy in agriculture in the past, as I am able to apply that test only to our policy in the past. You cannot judge progeny in an animal by its appearance. Even when Deputy Moher calls out from the platform and says: "Let us get cracking" and on the other hand, says to his neighbours: "Wives, vote for me so that your husbands may get employment" they will be well—advised to apply the same criterion to Deputy Moher as they would to a quadruped and say: "We shall judge you by results."
What are the results of the policy for which Deputy Moher's Party has been responsible? I can speak only of what I have personal knowledge. After 16 years of Fianna Fáil policy, in 1948 there were fewer cattle on the land of Ireland than at any time in our recorded history, fewer sheep, fewer pigs, and the land of Ireland was in a state of dereliction unprecedented in our history. It was in that situation that we took over to apply our policy, starting from a point where we had less live stock than we ever had before and more devastated land than this country had ever seen.
What were the results? I asked the Taoiseach some questions the week before last and I asked the Minister for Agriculture some questions last week, designed to elicit from them what the output of the agricultural industry had been last year, which was the harvest of our last sowing. Let us judge the policy for which we were responsible by the answers the Fianna Fáil Ministers gave to these questions. Up to the 16th November, the mills had received 3,066,000 barrels of wheat, the greatest crop of wheat ever gathered in this country——
So it can be grown.
Our exports of bacon had increased to £2,059,000 in the first nine months of this year as compared with something like £80,000 in the first nine months of last year. The quantity of creamery butter produced in this country up to the 31st October, 1957, was 897,000 cwts., the greatest quantity of butter ever produced in the creameries of Ireland. The quantity of milk received in the creameries was 260,994,000 gallons, the greatest quantity ever delivered to the creameries of Ireland in the history of Ireland. The estimated output of the 1957 barely harvest was 400,000 tons, the largest barley harvest ever gathered in the history of Ireland. The export of live cattle from Ireland in the first nine months of 1957 was 697,321, a greater number than had ever been exported in the history of this country. Our total output of cattle for the year 1956, which is the last year for which figures are available, amounted to 994,000 cattle. That is our exports, our dead—meat exports and domestic consumption. That is the highest figure ever recorded, with the exception of 1954 and 1938-39.
There are some cheerful Christians who are inclined to qualify their rejoicing at those figures by saying: "Ah, but the cattle population is going down." Fortunately, the facts do not sustain that, because in the last enumeration of our cattle, in June, 1957, we have an increase of 42,000 in the number of our milch cows and an increase of 8,900 in our heifers and calves. There has been a substantial reduction in the number of our cattle two years old and under three and in the number of our cattle over three years old, which is a thoroughly desirable development.
Many people here have completely come to overlook the value of sheep to our economy, but I direct the attention of the House to the fact that, in the last ten years, the sheep population of this country has increased from approximately 2,000,000 to 3,707,000 in June, 1957. I believe that this year we will reach the happy position of having put more pigs into the bacon factories of Ireland. Although that is by no means the end of all of our objectives, I believe these tendencies make it perfectly clear that the policies which we have advocated have had results.
I want to say a word in respect of the pig situation. There are two factors at present causing considerable anxiety to the pig producers of this country. One is that they are not satisfied that the existing grading system in the factories is doing full justice to the producers. The other is that they feel the present general standstill Order throughout the country is in excess of the essential requirements that a prudent Minister for Agriculture would operate for the eradication of swine fever.
I have said, and I want to reiterate, I am prepared, and the Party of which I am a member is prepared, to sustain the Minister for Agriculture in any necessary measures which he must take to eradicate swine fever. But at the same time due regard should be had to the very severe hardships in which a protracted general standstill Order involves a great many of our people. I know it is very hard for a Minister for Agriculture to query or reject the technical advice of his veterinary advisers. But I also know, and anyone with experience knows, that a veterinary adviser is obliged by the nature of his calling to recommend to his Minister what in his judgment, from the veterinary point of view, is the optimum course.
It is the function of a responsible Minister for Agriculture to listen and give due weight to the veterinary advice he receives, but it is also his function to listen and give due weight to the advice received from his livestock technical officers and others qualified to advise him and then give a judgment, not only in the light of the technical veterinary aspects but in regard to all the aspects of the question which legitimately engage the concern of the Minister for Agriculture.
Debate adjourned.