Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 26 Feb 1959

Vol. 173 No. 2

Committee on Finance. - Vote 26—Agriculture.

Minister for Agriculture (Mr. Smith)

I move:—

That a Supplementary sum not exceeding £2,220,000 be granted to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1959, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Minister for Agriculture, including certain Services administered by that Office, and for payment of certain Subsidies and sundry Grants-in-Aid.

Most of the sum required is accounted for by three items: losses on disposal of wheat and payments to wheat growers, £1,160,000; subsidies on dairy produce, £625,000; and fertiliser subsidy, £500,000.

The payments on wheat are required to meet (a) the balance of the losses on the disposal of the 1957 crop, (b) portion of the sum needed to make the special payments to growers of wheat in 1958, and (c) portion of the losses incurred in the disposal of wheat of the 1958 crop purchased by An Bord Gráin.

The losses on the disposal of the 1957 wheat crop were greater than estimated, largely because the quantity of wheat to be disposed of was higher than originally estimated. This arose from the sharp decline in flour production in 1958. The amount required under this heading is £610,000.

The handling of the 1958 crop presented great difficulty, and, as already announced, it is proposed to make a special additional payment to growers of wheat in 1958. The total cost of these payments is estimated at £420,000, of which provision is being made for £300,000 during the current financial year.

The balance of £250,000 is required to meet portion of the loss incurred in the disposal of wheat of the 1958 crop by An Bord Gráin. In this regard, I may say that the board will have to dispose of over 200,000 tons of wheat at an average loss of up to £6 a ton. After taking into account the receipts from the customs duty on wheat and the wheat levy, it is estimated that the net Exchequer commitment in respect of the 1958 wheat crop will be about £520,000.

As regards subsidies on dairy produce, the provision under this heading is always difficult to estimate accurately, as so much depends on such variable items as the quantity of butter likely to be available for export and the prices obtainable on the export market. The net outcome is that a further £625,000 is required during the current financial year to meet the losses of the Butter Marketing Committee.

It is estimated that total exports in the year ending 31st March, 1959, will amount to about 238,600 cwt., of which 203,500 cwt. were produced in the 1958 season. The total losses to be met during the current financial year are estimated at £2,674,200 of which £2,025,000 will be met by the Exchequer and £649,200 out of the Dairy Produce (Price Stabilisation) Fund from levies collected from creameries on the sale of butter. There is, of course, a certain amount of overlapping in regard to payments. This year, for instance, the Exchequer will bear the full loss on all butter produced in the 1957 season and exported after 31st March, 1958, while some of the payments on exports of butter produced in the 1958 season will not be recouped until the 1959-60 financial year.

The fertiliser subsidy is an entirely new service which has been introduced in accordance with the policy announced in the White Paper. A substantial subsidy is being paid to enable the price of single superphosphate (8 per cent. phosphorus) to be cut by £4 a ton, with corresponding reductions in the prices of other grades of superphosphate and of other phosphatic fertilisers. Phosphates are now cheaper in this country than in most other countries, and we are hoping for a very big increase in the use of this essential fertiliser, particularly on grassland. The annual amount of the subsidy is estimated at about £1,750,000.

More money is also needed for the ground limestone subsidy. The original estimate assumed that the reduction in the rate of subsidy by approximately one-third, or about 4/- a ton, would come into effect very early in the financial year, whereas, in fact, it was decided to apply the reduction only from the 1st June, 1958, that is, after the peak period for deliveries had passed.

The additional sum required under sub-head F. (7) includes £25,000 towards clearing the indebtedness of the Faculty of General Agriculture of U.C.D. on capital account. This indebtedness was incurred owing to the necessity of providing additional accommodation and equipment to cope with the increased numbers of students. £2,000 is included for the establishment of a Professorship of Forestry.

The sum required under sub-head N. (1)—Diseases of Animals Acts—is mainly for swine fever compensation. I am glad to say that we have had no outbreak of this disease since last May, and it has, therefore, been possible to relax the restrictions that have been in force for some years. The total amount paid in compensation from the time of the first outbreak is £140,000.

The additional provision under sub-head M. (1) is for customs duty on the import of a mobile clinic which was recently donated to the Blue Cross for use in Ireland. The donation covered the cost of the clinic but not the duty. As the duty is a revenue one it was not feasible to remit it, and it was, therefore, arranged that the duty would be paid by my Department. I may say that this mobile clinic is the most up-to-date vehicle of the kind in Britain or Ireland and will enable much good to be done for injured or distressed animals. It will also have a considerable educational value.

More money is required under sub-head O. (6) (Grain Storage (Loans) Act) because a loan that was provided for in 1957-58 could not be issued during that year owning to delay in completion of legal formalities.

The farm buildings and water supplies scheme (sub-head M. (6) is costing somewhat more than was estimated.

Mr. Dillon

The House will have noted the extraordinary terms in which the Minister for Agriculture has referred to the loss on the disposal of the 1957 crop. He almost ceased to be articulate at all when he was reading out that paragraph from his brief. The plain truth is that the Minister, in a moment of genius, shipped out of this country a very large quantity of good, millable wheat of the 1957 crop which he sold abroad, so far as I know, at £1 a barrel, and then found himself in the 1958 cereal year with virtually no Irish millable wheat at all.

There is not a single barrel of that wheat of the 1957 crop that need have been exported or a 1/- that needed to have been lost. I remember very well the Minister romping in here to announce that during the administration of the late Senator Moylan in that Department, nothing had been done to deal with this surplus problem, that he was a great man for taking decisions and he had taken a decision on the subject: ship it all abroad. It was not a very well chosen decision, but it is done now and we have to pay for it. The remainder of the money under this sub-head, a substantial sum, represents the operations that have been carried on in respect of the 1958 wheat crop. I am told now by the Minister and others of his colleagues that it is the millers now who are to determine the millability of Irish wheat. I can assure the House that if that is to be the criterion for the future, there will be a lot of unmillable wheat knocking about.

I have been quite unable to follow what took place in the dealings and counter dealings whereby the 1958 crop has been disposed of. I know that very little of it has been converted into flour. I know also—and there are few facts about this whole transaction which one can ascertain with certainty—that there has been no surplus of millable wheat to export. That is certain; yet we put a levy of 5/9 per barrel on wheat last year to create a fund out of which losses on the export of surplus millable wheat were to be recouped. There were no exports of surplus millable wheat and, in those circumstances, it seems to me a reasonable proposition that the 5/9 levy which was made on wheat should be returned to those from whom it was taken, because the event in contemplation of which the levy was made never transpired.

Instead of that, some other device has been operated to return a part of that levy to the farmers from whom it was collected. I think that is wrong and unjust. If an agreement is made with a body of citizens of this State to which the Government is one of the parties, that agreement ought to be observed. You can fool them or trick them out of what they are entitled to, and if you are a strong Government with a docile Party behind you who are prepared to go into the Lobby to support you in doing that, it is physically possible to do it; but that does not make it desirable. Hereafter, anyone who puts his hand to an agreement with the Government has notice that if subsequently the Government elects unilaterally to change the agreement, that may be done and that possibly will make it much more difficult to get the kind of collaboration the Department of Agriculture ought to have available to it and without which the work of the Department of Agriculture becomes very much more difficult. However, it is one of the fruits of strong government that the rights of relatively small minorities fall by the wayside, particularly when they are represented in this House by a Deputy like Deputy Moher or Deputy Corry.

Mr. Moher

I knew the Deputy would start that.

Mr. Dillon

Neither Deputy Corry nor Deputy Gibbon is here.

Mr. Moher

The Deputy does not want a row at this late hour?

Mr. Dillon

If I could stir up the conscience of some Deputies opposite, it would be well. We shall call some of them in.

Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted and 20 Members being present,

Mr. Dillon

We were talking about wheat. I often wonder if the Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party—who made such valiant promises about the 84/-which they pledged themselves to secure—feel free to tell the truth now to the wheat growers, who trusted them and who not only did not get 84/-a barrel for their wheat, but saw a levy of 5/9 collected from them and, when the event for which it was collected failed to transpire, were refused the justice of getting a refund. I wonder if any of those Deputies who gave those promises to their own constituents, will get up and say in Dáil Éireann what they were wont to say so eloquently at the crossroads in their own constituencies. Or have they become so utterly depraved that they are prepared to suffer in silence the utter repudiation which they have experienced at the hands of the Minister who constitutes part of the "strong" Government which we at present have.

I want to refer to the butter subsidy. I think the price of butter is improving in the world market and that it probably will continue to improve. There arises one feature, Sir, in regard to that, on which I think the Minister might give us further and better information. There is a sum of £2,000,000 required for subsidies on dairy produce in this year. We had a very bad hay season last year. There has been an exceptional outbreak of fluke, not only in sheep but in cattle as well; and I apprehend that the production of butter next year will be materially reduced. It may well be that there will be a relatively small charge to be met by the Exchequer in respect of butter subsidy, when one considers the probability of reduced supplies and of improving prices on the British market. In those circumstances, I wonder if it is possible to consider providing some inducement to our creamery farmers voluntarily to co-operate in the elimination of bovine tuberculosis, by offering them some extra payment for milk delivered to the creamery where they voluntarily eliminate T.B. reactors from their herds.

I am not altogether sure, Sir, owing to the limited nature of the sub-heads that we can pursue this exhaustively on this Supplementary Estimate. I merely suggest to the Minister that, between now and the time of the main Estimate, he may give consideration to that possibility.

I want to refer to the fertiliser subsidy. I think the Minister made a ghastly mistake in reducing the lime subsidy by 4/- a ton as he did. There is no fertiliser more urgently needed in this country than lime. It is all produced from Irish raw material, by Irish labour. It involves no imports at all. If there ever was a case when it was desirable to promote the maximum possible user of a commodity, it is the case of ground limestone. It means simply bringing men, machinery and raw materials together, to provide a substance which greatly improves the fundamental national wealth of the country, which is the land. I would suggest to the Minister that, instead of persisting in his policy of reducing the limestone subsidy, he should restore it. In my judgment, the application of lime to the land of Ireland is just as important as the application of phosphates, and it has the additional advantage that its raw material is here in abundance, whereas all our phosphates have to be imported.

There is another point to which I wish to direct the Minister's attention. I think he makes a mistake in trying to pursue with mathematical precision the various percentages of phosphatic fertilisers. He has prescribed a subsidy for basic slag, based on the percentage of phosphates contained in the slag. Slag comes in with 18, 19, 20, 21 and up to 24 per cent. phosphates; but one cannot find out what the phosphate content of the slag is until it has been delivered. Therefore, there is slag selling in different places at the present time with different rates of subsidy attaching to it. The difference is trivial. It amounts to only a few pence per cwt., but it must involve a good deal of administrative expense in order to maintain this mathematical calculation of the subsidy as between one variety of slag and another. It would be far better if the Minister simply prescribed a rate of 3/- or 4/-per cwt. for the slag and left it at that. The end result would be just the same but a great deal of unnecessary confusion would be avoided.

The subsidisation of phosphatic manures is a good thing and I echo the Minister's hope, now that phosphatic fertilisers are as cheap in this country to the farmer as they are in any country in the world, that very greatly increased quantities will be used. I want to suggest to the Minister that the quantity of potash used in this country is far too small, but the optimum quantity which it is necessary to use is relatively small compared with the optimum quantities of phosphate or lime that are used. A very modest appropriation to subsidise potash would result in substantially increased quantities of this fertiliser being put out. If we could feel that sufficient quantities of lime, phosphate and potash were being put out on the land, we might reasonably anticipate within the foreseeable future the elevation of the mineral content of the soil to the proper level and the Minister might well consider including potash in the fertiliser subsidy as well as phosphates.

I know that it is generally anticipated that whenever the Minister for Agriculture brings an Estimate before this House, he may expect to start a row. I do not particularly want to start a row on this Estimate. I do not want to underestimate the problems with which a Minister for Agriculture perennially has to grapple. I do not want to suggest that any Minister for Agriculture confronted with the situation which arose out of the catastrophic wheat harvest last year could have disposed of it without considerable difficulty, but I think the Minister's belief in his own exceptional capacity for arriving at whole flocks of decisions in one afternoon, if his mind turned in that direction, has been responsible for his making very serious mistakes in regard to the way in which the problem of the wheat growers was handled in this year, and especially I deplore the fact that precipitate decisions in regard to the sale of the 1957 surplus have involved the Exchequer in huge losses which it should never have been asked to bear and foolish decisions in regard to the wheat levy have left a deep sense of grievance with a great many farmers who believe, and justly believe, that they have been unfairly treated.

I think it right to sound this note of warning: One of the results of the way in which the wheat farmers are being treated this year is that you may have a very big swing away from wheat into barley in the coming cereal year. That, in itself, would not be a bad thing, if we are equipped to handle the increased quantity of barley, but the Minister ought to prepare himself for an event of that character and see that steps are taken in time to ensure that the barley crop will be handled expeditiously and economically.

Such other matters as I might wish to refer to must await the main Estimate as the restricted scope of this Estimate limits me to the mention of the matters referred to in the sub-heads, but I think the Minister owes a duty, not only to himself but to the House and to the country, to avail of this opportunity to inform the House and the country how does he justify retaining the levy of 5/9 which he was authorised to collect for the purpose of financing exports of surplus millable wheat when, in fact, he had no surplus of millable wheat to export?

Mr. Rooney

This Estimate contains an admission from the Minister of a very stupid decision which he made early last year regarding the export of sound wheat surplus from the 1957 crop at sacrifice prices. The Minister was so convinced that he was right that he decided to set up the Grain Board to handle the wheat deliveries and cut 5/9 per barrel from the price of wheat, which was to go into a fund for the purpose of meeting losses which might result from the export of wheat this year from the 1958 crop, again at sacrifice prices. These are the considerations which arise in connection with this Supplementary Estimate in regard to the price of wheat.

The Minister and his Party should stop telling the farmers that they were well treated regarding the sale of wheat and the price which they received. The farmers were badly treated, in the first instance, because the Government did not face up to their responsibilities and deal with the farmers on the basis of a guaranteed price, but, instead, handed them over to a Grain Board with instructions to deduct 5/9 per barrel.

In addition to the deduction of 5/9 a barrel, there were further reductions in the price of the basis of screenings and defects, as they were described, on delivery. In regard to sub-head M (14) there is a note to the effect that the sum of £300,000 is required to enable authorised purchasers to make "ex gratia payments” to growers in respect of the 1958 wheat crop. These are not ex gratia payments. This is a refund of a deduction in the payments made to farmers, namely, the 5/9 per barrel and further deductions under the headings of “moisture”, “screenings” and so on. This is described as an ex gratia payment instead of a refund.

When the harvest started last year the farmers understood that there would be a cut of 5/9 a barrel, the proceeds of which would be used towards making good any loss resulting from the sale of the surplus exported from the 1958 crop. The Government and the Minister should stand over that. We remember that last year those surplus quantities of wheat were exported at the ridiculous price of £1 per barrel. No wonder these exports were gladly accepted across the water. No wonder businessmen realised that the wheat was simply being given away last year. It was a surplus that was capable of being milled and that should have been milled. We know ourselves that in other countries vast quantities of wheat and flour are held over from one year to the next. Many countries have a large quantity in store up to a period of two or three years. It is only at that stage that the question of a surplus might be considered and dealt with.

Here, we have the Minister dealing with a surplus from one harvest—the harvest of 1957. He takes an opportunity to run away with the wheat, expecting that he would have another surplus in 1958. Supposing he had another surplus in 1958? At least, he would only then consider himself to have what might be regarded as a small problem. He should have waited until the 1958 crop was harvested, knowing from experience that in our climatic conditions, there is difficulty in the harvesting of wheat. On an average, at least every third year and sometimes every second year, there is a problem in connection with the harvesting of wheat.

In addition, the Minister had already taken the precaution of arranging for a substantial cut to be made in the price of wheat. The remarkable thing about the difficulties confronting wheat growers is that they were given to understand they would get £4 2s. 6d. per barrel early in 1957, if Fianna Fáil got into power. A question was asked in March, 1957, of the Minister for Agriculture. It was not the Minister across the floor; I think that at the time it was Deputy Aiken. He was asked if, in view of the statements made in relation to the wheat price and in view of the fact that most of the crop had not then been put in the land in March, 1957, he would, at that stage, alter the price guaranteed by Deputy Dillon at the end of January, 1957. He was asked if he would at that stage alter the price in accordance with the statement on the wireless by the Minister for Finance who referred to the cut in the price of wheat in a previous year as "cruel" and "unjust". The reply given by the Minister at that time, in which the name of Deputy Corry was mentioned, stated that he realised the national importance of wheat-growing and that he would make a statement later. But we never heard anything further from him. We waited and got nothing better than the price guaranteed by Deputy Dillon at the end of January, 1957, and they were glad to accept it.

Then, in 1958, the Minister decided to divest himself of all responsibility and handed over his responsibility to An Bord Gráin which was charged with the responsibility of cutting the price of wheat in various ways. When we examine these figures, we see that there was a cut of £2 6s. per ton, being 5/9 per barrel. In addition, there was a cut from the screenings, and so on. Further, we now have the situation where there is a tax of £2 a ton being put on wheat imported into this country. The consumers of bread and flour are paying that tax of £2 a ton in the form of a duty which is being applied to all wheat imported at present.

The Minister and his Government should stop telling the farmers that they were well treated in relation to this matter last year. Fianna Fáil went back on every word they uttered in relation to their policy on wheat. Do we see the walls and hoardings covered any more with the words: "Grow More Wheat"? In years past, that was one of the Fianna Fáil slogans. They have dropped it. There are no more votes in that slogan for them.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

It is not usual to discuss general policy on a Supplementary Estimate.

Mr. Rooney

I have just one further point to make in relation to this cut. Would the wheat growers have agreed to a cut of 5/9 a barrel if they knew it was not to be applied towards making up a loss on an exportable surplus? If they were told that the 5/9 was not to be used and applied towards a surplus, does the Minister think the farmers would agree to a cut of 5/9 a barrel in the price paid for their wheat?

I want to refer to the dairy farmers in the creamery areas. There, again, promises were held out to the dairy farmers that they would prosper if they had a Fianna Fáil Government. Instead, there has been a substantial cut in the price of milk. The statement recently issued by the Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association shows that their costs have gone up even higher and that the cut has brought greater hardship to them. A sum of £649,000 is being taken from the creamery milk suppliers. They were not warned, when the Fianna Fáil Party were looking for their votes, that an arrangement would be made whereby £649,000 would be taken out of their pockets in relation to the manufacture of butter from milk supplied to creameries.

Those are two matters the Minister should explain to the farmers. I hope that, when he is approached by the farmers concerning the adjustment of the price for their milk, the Minister will consider the case they have to put up to him and explain to them why he decided, instead of giving them the increase they expected from him and his Government, to cut the price in the past 12 months.

Mr. O'Sullivan

This is such a large sum that the Minister and the Government must have been very remiss in preparing their Estimates last year that they could not take into consideration the charges for which this money is now intended. It is true that it has been inflated by the fact that the Minister must export butter produced in the Munster counties because of reduced consumption of butter at home as a result of the Government's policy which has put butter beyond the level at which many ordinary people in this country can now buy it. It is extraordinary that, having made such a strong case for the complete abolition of subsidies to reduce the price of butter at home, we should now have to vote such a very large sum to subsidise that same butter for the British or foreign consumer. We say: "Would it not have been a better thing if nothing had been done?" Perhaps the Government were not prepared to travel the road of assisting to increase home consumption. At least, they could have abstained from a policy that was bound to bring about what we knew by experience would happen. There has been a sharp reduction in the home consumption of butter. This is now being met by a levy on production.

The country could not have secured the high level of production it enjoyed in recent years—which is contributing so much to our economy in providing us with a level of exports which makes it possible for our people to enjoy their present standard of living—were it not that price guarantees were given on certain commodities. With the exception of beet, we are now reaching a situation in which none of the four commodities the price of which was guaranteed up to the advent of this Government will have that guaranteed price.

I do not think that the agriculturists realise how much it would redound to their own benefit, as well as to the benefit of the nation, to have that level of increased and more economical production. It will not assist in any way—in fact it will be very detrimental—to have a situation wherein shareholders in co-operative creameries will be provided with their annual report and see an item there for a levy on production —that is the description by the auditors, "levy on production"—of an amount exceeding £17,000. In the circumstances in which so many sections of our people are asked to bear an increase in the cost of living and asked to bear the consequential increase in wages and the spiral of higher costs sparked off by those increases, it is all wrong that a section such as the dairy industry should be called upon to contribute this levy of almost £650,000.

In relation to wheat, the case made by the Minister at the time An Bord Gráin was set up was based completely on the assumption that there would be an exportable surplus. The Deputies on the far side who spoke were emphatic on the point that it was only occasioned because of the practical certainty that there would be this large exportable surplus. Deputy Dillon, Deputy Rooney and others, referred to the foolishness of the Minister in stampeding in relation to the yield of wheat which he had from the 1957 crop. There is no doubt that there was plenty of accommodation throughout the country to hold that grain. If it was to be made available at all, even if the Government felt that they had to dispose of it—and we contend that they did not have to dispose of it—at least they could have made it available to the Irish farmers, to the pig feeders and to the people who would happily have purchased the grain for the price at which it was dumped in Britain and elsewhere. We stand over our point that it was foolish to have disposed of it at all, that it could easily have been stored and that we would not have the problems we have, consequent on the disasters of last year's harvest, if the Government had not stampeded into disposing that wheat.

The persistence of the Government in retaining the levy that was imposed to meet the eventuality of having that surplus is completely contrary to their entire history in relation to wheat growing, and entirely contrary to the assurances they gave to the electorate in many parts of the country, and positively to the wheat growers, that in the event of Fianna Fáil again gaining office, they would pay a minimum price of 80/- a barrel. Some Deputies opposite have denied that they made such statements. I said here on another occasion that I heard Deputy Corry making that statement from a platform in Kilkenny, in the presence of the Taoiseach. He was good enough to come in here and admit that he did say it. Of course, he was looking for votes at the time and anything was good enough to delude the farmers of Carlow-Kilkenny, and Leix-Offaly, that their best bet would be to remove the inter-Party Government and once a Fianna Fáil Government were elected, then, from that date onwards, the wheat growers would enjoy a price of £4 a barrel for wheat. No section of the community was as hard hit by the winter as the grain growers were last year, but despite that, the Government persist in keeping the levy on the grain growers.

It will be very hard for the Minister and the Government to maintain their case in regard to the imposition of that levy. It is also true that a sum of money has been set aside from the rearrangement of prices to effect a reduction in bread, but the manner in which that was done has led to a lot of criticism because there is quite a lot of money involved—£400,000. It is interesting to see how much of that has been passed on to the benefit of the consumer because we know what happens in shops throughout the country when the difficulty arises of finding the farthing. We know what happens, and somewhere in between a fairly fine sum of money—£400,000 —has been "mopped" up.

If the Government were serious in trying to undo some of the harm they have done in reducing the consumption of flour and bread, to which the Minister adverted here to-day, they would have gone further than giving the miserable farthing which was given to reduce the price of bread. We have a situation where the industry is also affected by that reduction in consumption, in both aspects of agriculture, both in relation to wheat and in relation to milk. The Government now in office led, the people to believe that on their accession to office they would experience different treatment from that which has been meted out to them in the past two years. Despite their great conversion to the importance of the cattle trade, unless the Government realise that in these exceptional years, when the dairy farmers are being called upon to bear the brunt of an extremely costly and desirable, but still necessary economy—the elimination of bovine T.B.-and unless they realise the impact that will have on the depletion of herds and on the reduction of incomes of many thousands of people, then the situation will develop, in some years' time, where we will see a reversion to what we experienced before the advent of the first inter-Party Government, the situation where there will not be enough stock in the country and where ultimately, every section will experience the recession that will follow from the fact we have not the amount of cattle to provide the high level of exports upon which all sections of the country depend.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

That would seem to be a matter for the main Estimate.

Mr. Smith

I really never get tired listening to Fine Gael Deputies on two of the subjects about which we have heard them speak and which are covered in this Supplementary Estimate. One is wheat and the other is milk—wheat prices and milk prices. One would have to enjoy, too, their concern about the Government and the Government Party, in so far as the electorate is concerned. As has been said before, on this side of the House, there are a few of us who have seen the other days, as far as Fine Gael are concerned. We cannot believe what we hear from them in regard to these matters. Indeed, the signs are that the public outside do not believe them either.

Mr. O'Sullivan

Would you like to test them on that?

Mr. Smith

Much play has been made with this wheat levy. The whole background that presented itself last year is being distorted. It has been stated here that my Department and the Government were unwise to dispose of the surplus wheat carry-over from 1955-56 and 1956-57, which amounted to roughly 120,000 tons. Some of the Fine Gael Deputies who appear to have some connection with the National Farmers' Association outside apparently do not realise that the farming organisations here worried about this wheat carry-over because they looked upon it as a threat to their security. In fact, the representatives of these organisations repeated their fears time and time again in that regard.

The decision to dispose of that wheat was not a matter of my suddenly deciding to do it. It was a matter to which I had given a great deal of consideration; and the decision to sell could only be taken on the understanding that the Government approved and that the Department of Finance would meet the burden. I do not mind telling the House and telling Deputy Dillon, who has referred to this matter on more than one occasion, that my belief is that the reason for the carry-over of that surplus wheat was that the previous Government were not really in a position to face up to financing the disposal of it.

There is no purpose in this country in carrying over large quantities of surplus wheat, because with every week and every month that passes, there are interest charges and all sorts of maintenance charges and the price is soaring up and up, as far as the Exchequer is concerned. Surely, with the prospect of a harvest from 420,000 acres, which in normal times could be expected to yield 420,000 tons of native wheat, it was not an unreasonable decision? I do not think it is necessary to go to any great pains to defend oneself for having made that decision.

In 1958, the harvest did not turn out as we had hoped. Who could ever make a calculation of that nature? In the months of April, May or June, all we could say was that, as far as we could determine, there was a certain acreage of wheat sown and that from previous experience we could expect it would yield one ton of wheat per acre. The determination of the levy of 5/9 was based on that reckoning.

When An Bord Gráin was set up, the understanding was that, as far as the wheat growers were concerned, a guaranteed price would be provided in respect of 300,000 tons of wheat and that the growers would subsidise any sale of wheat grown in excess of that quantity. In the working out of that plan, the growers and their representatives were consulted. Indeed, it is true to say that that scheme was their scheme. Shortly after the harvest started, it became apparent to everybody that the wheat crop was of such a low standard, because of the season, that none of it, as it was being presented, was being accepted by the millers as millable. If the Government had pulled out at that stage and had allowed the growers to dispose of that wheat at, maybe, 20/-, 25/- or 30/- per barrel, they could have done so; and the growers might not have been called upon to pay a levy because the wheat they were producing was not millable wheat in the sense which the scheme envisaged.

It was in my own mind that the idea first arose—it was not I that developed it—of treating this problem entirely on a new basis and forgetting the understandings that had been arrived at on the assumption that the season would be a normal one, that the crop would be normal and that it would be harvested under reasonable conditions. My suggestion was: "What about buying this wheat, which we will classify as sound, though not millable? What about buying this wheat at prices determined by the Wheat Order, collecting the 5/9 levy, in the knowledge that this wheat would have to be disposed of, not as millable wheat but as animal feed at animal feed prices." I said: "Why not let this wheat be paid for as sound wheat on the basis of the Wheat Order, that the levy be collected, that the Government stand in to meet the rest and that the remainder of the wheat of that class of this year's crop be disposed of at animal feed prices ?"

That decision was made because there was urgency there. It was made as a result of consultations with those interested in the matter and with their approval. It was a means of dealing with a desperate situation and was a fair approach to the problem. While I would not expect to hear from the Fine Gael benches that it was fair, I know what I am saying now will be completely understood by those who had to deal with this matter down the country.

Some few criticisms were directed at the amount of the levy collected from the milk producers. In this regard, it can be said that, had one known what the Almighty was going to send us, the sale of butter in November and December of 1957 and in January, February, March and April of 1958 could be said to have been a foolish transaction because butter prices in those months were at their very lowest. I have not, of course, the genius of some of the members of Fine Gael who can look into the future and see what is to happen and I am not here to gamble with business of this nature. Had we kept the butter that was sold in those months and put it on the market now, it is obvious that the losses would not have been so great.

Somebody recently in the course of conversation reminded me of that fact. I think that "somebody" was also a member of one of the committees set up to examine the whole matter of butter marketing. Sometimes, when criticism of that nature is levelled at one because of judgment determined as faulty after the event, and when has to listen to recommendations as to how one should behave in future, things just do not seem to add up. Having regard to the amount of the contribution being made by the taxpayer in this matter, this levy is entirely defensible and, for my part, I have not the slightest hesitation in taking my stand to defend it here or outside.

Vote put and agreed to.