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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 13 Jul 1961

Vol. 191 No. 6

Committee on Finance. - Vote 43—Agriculture (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion: "That the Estimate be referred back for reconsideration."

When I moved to report progress I said I wanted to raise a specific matter in connection with the administration of the Department during the past year. The Minister refers in his statement to the fact that there was a quantity of 240,000 tons of wheat which had to be disposed of by An Bórd Gráin either by export or by sale on the home market for animal feed.

I want to ask this question: is it true that we wound up by selling about 100,000 tons of this wheat to a Dutchman for something between £16 and £18 a ton at the end of a period during which we imported 1,250,000 cwts of pollard at prices varying from 18/- to 20/11d. per cwt? Would anyone explain to me also on what basis of calculation it was thought desirable to import 1,250,000 cwts of pollard at an average price of £19 a ton while we were selling 100,000 tons of wheat for export to Holland at a price of £16 or £18, more especially when during the earlier part of the year the minimum price at which that wheat could be bought here at home was £22? It was reduced to £20 a ton relatively recently and now I understand there is little, if any, to be had. If you go to look for it, you are told it has all been disposed of to the Dutchman.

It seems to me one of the oddest transactions we have ever engaged in. I should like to be reassured by the Minister that, if he finds himself confronted in any future season with 240,000 tons of wheat which he proposes to dispose of for animal feeding, he should seriously consider giving a preference to the home producer rather than selling it to the Dutch at a price less than the home producer is paying for imported pollard.

When I first mentioned this in this House I think the Minister sought to make the case that there was some fundamental difference between pollard and feed wheat. Of course, there is not. The process of making pollard is that you grind up wheat and you abstract from the wheat a certain percentage, and that percentage abstraction is pollard. You can extract 20 per cent., or 30 per cent., or 40 per cent., or you can extract any higher percentage you like. Naturally, if you are dealing with wheat which is convertible into flour, you make your extraction as low as you can because flour fetches a higher price than pollard and, therefore, it is easy to extract approximately 30 per cent. of pollard from whole wheat and sell the balance as flour. But, if you are selling the whole of the wheat for feed wheat, there is no reason why you should not extract 70 per cent. as pollard and leave the remaining 30 per cent. to be used either as flour or as a constituent of compound feeds. But one thing seemed to me perfectly manifest and obvious, and that is that it is daft to sell the Dutch Irish feed wheat at £16 or £18 a ton while we are buying over 1,000,000 cwts. of pollard at prices averaging £19 a ton. I should be glad to have some better explanation of that procedure from the Minister than he has made available to us heretofore.

The Minister said in the course of his speech that since the House recently had a full discussion on developments in relation to the organisation of European trade it was scarcely necessary for him to re-open the subject in any material way. I disagree with the Minister entirely. It seems to me that he has a very grave obligation to the agricultural community to give as clear a forecast as he is in a position to do of what the likely repercussions of the Common Market development will be on Irish agriculture. I think he has a pretty fair idea. It is true that no final programme has been fixed by the Six who constitute the present Common Market of Europe as to the final pattern that agricultural economics will have under the new régime but there is a good deal of material available in the Treaty of Rome itself to point in the general direction of what the repercussions are likely to be on the agricultural industry.

I think the Minister, with the additional information that he has at his disposal, has a duty to give all the guidance he can to the agricultural community here as to what the future holds for them. I am not in a position to provide an informed forecast in that matter because I have not access to the same material as is available to the Minister. Nevertheless, I dare to say that I believe that, given a right policy for agricultural production in this country, and the exploitation of the full potentialities of our 12,000,000 acres of arable land, it should be possible for the farmers to have a reasonably secure future in a Common Market world and, what is more important, to have a reasonable margin of profit on what they will produce for export in that common situation provided they are facilitated by the Minister for Agriculture and the Department to raise their agricultural output to its highest potentiality.

I do not think the Minister does justice to himself, to the House, or to the agricultural community by the kind of Delphic observation recorded at page 5 of his statement. He refers to the unsatisfactory prices for cattle which have been obtaining for some time and he states that certain factors have been suggested to him as giving rise to these unsatisfactory prices. "No doubt," he says, "all these factors operated, but if one adds them all up I am still left with the strong impression that they are not sufficient, in comparison with previous years, to account for anything like the full extent to which prices have fallen in Britain in recent months. It looks, therefore, as if there may be a factor or influence of some other but more obscure nature operating in Britain which has had the effect of making the decline in prices much steeper than most people could have expected." With all the information the Minister has, does he seriously tell us that there is some mysterious factor operating in Great Britain, the nature of which he cannot elucidate, because, if that is the case, things have changed very considerably since I was last in the Department of Agriculture?

In my experience very little could transpire in the markets in which we were vitally concerned that the resources of the Department could not detect. I do not know of any mysterious element that can be operating in Great Britain which could be beyond the capacity of the Department to disentangle and diagnose. I should be glad to know how it comes about that in this day and age we have reached a stage when we cannot, by an inquiry with our opposite numbers in Great Britain and through the ordinary trade channels to which we have access, find out this, or any other factor, that operates to the detriment of our livestock trade. Certain it is that the people who produce cattle and have them for sale have been having a very bad time for the last three years. In the spring there was some improvement in the price of cattle and it was thought that, perhaps, the depression was passed. Now we are right back where we were. Cattle are again hard to dispose of and selling at poor prices.

I often wonder when people recall the increased prices of cattle that were exported, the increased total of money secured by the sale of cattle, does anybody ever ask himself how each of these individual cattle fared? Does anybody ever ask himself in this House what did the men who produced the cattle make out of them? You can sell 40 cattle in the morning for £2,000 and yet lose £400 on the transaction, if you had to keep those cattle for longer than you should. You can sell 40 cattle another year for £2,000 and make £400 on the transaction if you have been able to sell them a bit earlier and get a better price for them because they are young. In the statistics they both appear as 40 cattle earning the same amount of money but, for the individual farmer, they represent between modest comfort and inevitable bankruptcy.

Sometimes when I hear statistics thrown about this House I wonder do those who refer to them so glibly ever think of what they mean to the individual farmer. I would like to ask the Minister one specific question. There has been an export subsidy operating in respect of fat cattle and meat. I understand that there is some change to be made in that subsidy and some people were under the impression that it was to end on 1st August. I understand that there is now some provision for its extension and I would ask the Minister to let us know if that is so.

I gave that information in reply to a Parliamentary Question some weeks ago.

In a supplementary question, I suggested that there was some suggestion to that effect and the Minister replied that that was so.

We had published in the Press a statement as to the amount of the subsidy. It received wide publication.

The subsidy is to continue indefinitely.

Yes. The statement to that effect was published and circulated widely. It is not to exceed £1 per cwt. as from 31st July. It will be on the same basis as at present.

In dealing with breeding the Minister said that special attention would be given to progeny testing. I would be glad if the Minister would tell us what is the scope of progeny testing in regard to cattle, particularly in regard to milking cattle, at the present time. The Minister has referred here to the exports of live sheep and lambs. I cannot but believe that the Minister is aware of the catastrophic fall in the price of lambs this year as compared with last year. I will be glad to hear if there is any prospect, in his estimation, of that situation improving.

I have mentioned on more than one occasion that I was advised that the inauguration of progeny testing of pigs is a good thing. I accepted that advice and I built the first testing station at Cork. I understand that there is another station to be established at Thorndale in Dublin but I think we are failing to communicate to the average person what benefit accrues from the operation of progeny testing. I concede at once that it is a long term project and I think it is acutely necessary that the public, which will mainly consist of pig producers, should have clearly outlined for them what is the nature of the pig progeny testing programme. I conceive it to be that the foundation stock of the pigs in the country will be vastly improved and that the day will come when we arrive at the situation when any farmer purchasing a breeding sow will have a guarantee that it comes from a generation of pigs that have passed through the progeny testing station at Cork or Thorndale and, therefore, has the capacity for the production of the highest grade of bacon pig available. I believe that at present a good many people of good will are at a loss to know what helpful purpose that progeny testing station is serving and the regular reports of the progeny tests themselves are so highly technical that the average person is at a loss to understand them.

I think I originally introduced the guaranteed price for Grade A pigs and I resisted very strenuously any proposal to provide a guaranteed price for pigs other than Grade A or the new Grade A Special pig that has been constituted recently. The reason for that was that if you try to fix a price for lower grade pigs the tendency would be for people to ignore the supervision necessary to produce the top grade pig. I find that people on the whole will be reasonable if they are asked to do reasonable things but there is no doubt that a small pig producer finds great difficulty in getting the higher grade. If the confidence of the small feeder is not to be undermined the Minister ought to take some further action to reassure him that his pigs are being equitably graded and that he is not being defrauded. I know that in the absence of special skilled husbandry it could happen that pigs do not attain the highest grade.

I believe that there is wide scope for the feeding of pigs to the store stage by small farmers culminating in the operations of more highly skilled feeders to bring them to the finished stage. That is on the basis of universal grading but I think we cannot close our eyes to a new development in Britain which has received wide publicity. That is the recent pronouncement by the chairman of Walls, one of the biggest bacon processing concerns in Britain, that he did not want farmers to grade pigs. The managing director of Walls, at the last meeting of the Board, was understood to say that he was prepared to accept the proposition that farmers ought to produce the pig that paid them best and that he, as a processor, accepted the assignment of tailoring that pig to suit the requirements of the consumers he was charged to serve. I understood him to say: "If a farmer finds it more economical to feed a fat pig, let him feed a fat pig. I will pay him on the weight of his pig and I will remove whatever excess fat is on the pig in the course of manufacture and will present the bacon to my customers in suitable form and will present the trimmings in divers other forms, for which it is my job to find a market."

That has to be followed, in regard to our domestic conditions, by a realisation of the fact that the manufacturer in Britain has a very much more diversified market for the by-products of the pork industry than any manufacturer in Ireland, that they are catering for a population of 50 millions and that ours are catering for a population of 3 millions, and that by-products like sausage, chops and the other things that constitute the by-products of the pork industry are not easily shippable in fresh condition to the British market.

Therefore, we are faced with the situation that whereas a fat pig may be wholly unsuited for domestic manufacture into bacon for export, it is not impossible that there could be a market in Great Britain for fat pigs which they could successfully convert into bacon and by-products on an economic basis. What many people forget is that prewar we had an annual export of more than one million live pigs to Britain and it was a very profitable business. It was a great trade. I do not see why we should not seek to find our way back into that trade to supplement the demand for pigs that exists in our own factories here at home. I would be glad to hear from the Minister for Agriculture whether he sees any prospect of exploiting that new concept of pig processing adumbrated by Walls for the benefit of the farmers of this country.

I see no reference in the Minister's statement to the prospects of the turkey trade. That is a very important trade and it is a trade urgently calling for close attention. Last year the turkey trade was not very good. It would have been much worse if we had not got the percentage of white turkeys that we were in a position to offer. I expect that in the course of the next two or three years we will be in a position when practically all the turkeys we have for export will belong to the new breeds introduced by the Department of Agriculture in 1956 and which are now being propagated at Athenry but I am told there is a new situation developing in that market in which a growing demand exists in Great Britain for a semi-processed bird which is packed and ready for the pot or the oven.

I adhere to the view that there is a very marked distinction in quality between a freshly killed bird and a deep-freeze turkey such as are at present being marketed in such large quantities in Great Britain but the deep freeze process undoubtedly does help in enabling the producer to spread his output over a much longer time. I understand the turkeys for the Christmas trade in England now begin to be slaughtered in the month of July and go into deep freeze and are then sold out of the deep freeze in the month of December whereas all our turkeys are killed and shipped in the last week of November and the first three weeks of December. I wonder is it not overdue to examine that whole business more closely? Unless we are prepared actively to enter into this trade of the prepared turkey, do we not stand in jeopardy of losing this market altogether?

I am satisfied that there is a difference in quality. I am satisfied that if one has the discrimination to appreciate it, the deep freeze bird tastes like cotton wool compared to a freshly killed bird but I am reluctantly forced to the conclusion that that degree of discrimination is largely disappearing in the purchasing public in the advanced industrial communities like Great Britain. There is no use thrusting quality on your customer if your customer prefers convenience. We could make a very great mistake, such as was often made in the history of trade before, by clinging too long and improvidently to certain standards of quality to which we attach great importance long after the consuming public which we serve have determined they no longer care, that what they want is a bird prepared for cooking, that they do not want to buy, or are not prepared to undergo the extra trouble of buying a freshly-slaughtered bird.

What does the Minister for Agriculture mean when he says that the price of creamery milk was increased by 1.3d. per gallon last year? What was the levy?

There was no levy last year.

I thought there was a levy made in proportion to our exports.

No, not last year.

Were there exports last year?

We had a levy up to the point when, in 1959, production went down and then we removed the levy. It has not been reimposed since.

The position is that the Exchequer undertakes to meet twothirds of the cost of the export subsidy and the industry itself must carry one-third.

That is right.

The Minister is not in a position to forecast what the levy is likely to be in respect of current exports?

I imagine there will not be very much left of the 1.3 pence, to which he makes such cheerful reference here, when that levy has been met. He has not told us, although this is late in the month of July, what the levy on wheat is to be this year. May we assume it will be approximately at the rate of last year?

We have not yet determined that question.

I deplore the fact that we continue to deny the farmer who has not ready cash the opportunity of participating in the Land Project. I believe the suspension of Part B has excluded from the benefits of that scheme a great many people who should be admitted to it and who cannot be because they have not got the money to put down, whereas under Part B they could have had it added to their annuity and pay it as they were in a position to do so.

I notice the Minister refers to the increased grant for cowbyres but I would be glad to know from him does that increase of 50 per cent. bring up the grant for cowbyres to the level at which it stood under the double cowbyre grant in connection with the T.B. scheme which he suspended. I do not think it does.

I am glad to see that he has discovered that his improvident interference with the lime subsidy so reacted against the whole scheme that he has reconsidered it now and restored the full subsidy but I do not know that he has any great reason to congratulate himself on that. I think a great deal of damage was done by the original imposition of the charge.

I read with interest the Minister's notes on the Bovine Tuberculosis Eradication Scheme but I observe that he does not venture to make any prognostication of when he hopes to arrive at a stage when the problem will have been finally disposed of. What he is doing at present is, of course, the relatively easy part of the job. He says he has not even started on the five south-western counties which constitute the dairying area of the country. I hope he will be able to achieve these objectives in the rest of the country quickly. He is assured of all the support we can give him in the prosecution of that task. But I do not think it is unreasonable to say that the public will await anxiously a more explicit forecast of what the future is in respect of Kerry, Cork, Tipperary, Limerick and South Kilkenny.

I rejoice to read in the notes published by the Minister of the virtual disappearance of infectious infertility in cattle in the western and northwestern counties. If we have achieved that by the introduction of A.I., we have made very material progress in a matter of very great urgency. I like to recall that the decision to introduce A.I. into that area was the subject of severe criticism at the time; but if we have achieved the purpose here described, then our decision in that matter has been amply vindicated. It would be a pity if we did not record that fact and mark it well, because it was as a result of a concentrated attack by the combined resources available in the Department of Agriculture that that age-old problem in Leitrim, Sligo, Donegal, and even in parts of Cavan and Longford, was brought under control and has now been apparently effectively disposed of.

I would be glad to hear of some more energetic plan to deal with the warble fly problem. I remember the hide merchants used to make considerable remonstrance to me when I was Minister for Agriculture that I was not more ardent in urging the farmers to treat their cattle with derris root. I always took the view that the only people who could benefit by the elimination of the warble fly were the hide merchants and that, if they wanted something done about it, they ought to be prepared to lend a hand. Beyond giving good advice, they never seemed to me to be prepared to do very much; but I was obliged to confess that when it came down to tin tacks as to what they should do, it was not so easy to suggest an effective contribution they could make. I think they could make that contribution now. The Department ought to study the question as to whether the combined resources of the livestock exporters, the hide exporters and the farmers themselves could not be mobilised to make the internal treatment now available for the control of warble fly available to farmers at a low cost, and for a trial period, and perhaps in a restricted area to see how it would work, free of cost.

I was talking to a man interested in rural conditions, who recently came back from Northumberland. He said the thing that struck him most there was that on the hottest summer day you never saw beasts what we call in the West "gadding", careering around with their tails in the air at the sound of the warble fly. He asked the people how could that be, that at that time of the year in Ireland the cattle would be all standing in the water, under trees or in the shade, that you could not get them and that no fence would hold them. This man was told that this was an area of relatively large farms and big estates and that a concentrated effort was made there about five or six years ago to eliminate the warble fly. Everybody combined in it in this area and there was not any warble fly there any more.

Ten years ago they could not have kept the cattle out in that way in the sun but had to provide shelter for them. Now they had forgotten all about the warble fly. If we could get an area in Ireland in which that objective was achieved, it would have a profound impression on all the other areas of the country and would make a very material contribution not only to increased milk output from the cattle protected from warble fly but a very substantial increment in the total value of hides derived from Irish cattle. There is now a practical way to go about it.

I have mentioned turkeys and I would be very glad if the Minister is in a position to give me light or guidance about prospects for the turkey trade in the year that lies ahead.

I was interested in the exports of dairy produce described in the Minister's notes in page 18. I notice that the value of domestic exports of dairy produce, including chocolate crumb, in the year 1960 was £8,499,000. I asked the Minister to furnish us with figures for the years going back to 1948 on a corresponding basis and they are reproduced in the Official Report of Tuesday, 11th July. They present an interesting picture, but not a very encouraging one. While from 1948 to 1953 there was a marked steady expansion, from 1955, after a set-back, there was a rise from £6.8 million to £10.3 million in 1957. Since that year there has been a steep decline and the figure for the last year is £8.4 million. That is not a very encouraging picture, and it is a source of surprise to me that the Minister does not appear to regard it as a somewhat disconcerting situation. I would have thought our exports of creamery products ought to show a very much more substantial expansion. I hope they will. I am satisfied that they could be made to grow very much materially if we went about it in the right way.

Certain of the schemes operated by the Department get lost sight of. I often think that some of the best schemes are most readily forgotten. I inaugurated a scheme called the Connemara scheme designed to remove the rocks off the small holdings of the Connemara farmers. Anyone familiar with conditions there must have realised what an infinite blessing it was to many of these people to have that plan available. I see that at the end of April, 1961, grants had been approved of under that scheme for work on 4,000 acres. I would be glad to know how the scheme is proceeding and whether the people are still availing of it on the scale they used to.

I notice the Minister's references to the water supply scheme and that he is providing a sum of £290,000 in this year, £170,000 for domestic supplies and £120,000 for extensions to farms. I should be glad to hear from him whether he considers that that scheme, combined with the scheme operated by the Department of Local Government, is in fact effective to bring water to the vast majority of our farmers, or whether it might be better to expand the inducements under that scheme rather than embark upon a national scheme calculated to cost £30 million to bring piped water along the main roads of Ireland.

I am not sure that the Minister for Local Government has not changed his mind. If it is correct that the Minister for Local Government has now reversed his ideas and proposes to confine the piping of water along the main roads to those areas where welled water is absent as a result of geological circumstances, then there will be no difference between us. But if there is to be a wholly improvident expenditure of public money on the provision of water mains along every road in Ireland and a consequent charge on all farmers who avail of the water supply for the water they use, over and above the capital cost of laying the mains, to the exclusion of the existing schemes operated by the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Local Government, I think such a decision would be greatly to be deplored.

I record again my profound dismay at the realisation that the share of the agricultural community in the national income is steadily diminishing. I record my profound dismay that it is becoming more manifest with the passage of every month and every year that the best elements of our agricultural community are being driven out of their homes and country. I am convinced that is largely because we are not going the right way about providing them with facilities which will enable them to get the maximum return from their land and the best markets in which to dispose of their produce.

I do not believe it is reasonable to impose on me in my present position the obligation of propounding to the Minister for Agriculture for the time being a comprehensive programme to achieve that end. One thing of which I am perfectly certain is that the key-stone of any future policy for the effective exploitation of the land, with consequent benefits to those who get their living on it and to the national economy as a whole, is an adequate agricultural advisory service working in close collaboration with the Agricultural Institute established by the Government of which I was a member.

At the present time the advisory services are grossly inadequate. There is no industrial activity which does not provide for apprenticeship, training and education in crafts so complex and difficult as agriculture. In our circumstances there can be no doubt in the mind of any reasonable man that the only place to give effective help in the use of the most modern methods of production is through demonstration and advice on the holding of the farmers concerned. It is simply not within the range of practicability to get every small farmer in this country educated in an agricultural college or furnished with a degree in Agricultural Science. I am not at all sure that, even if it were achieved, we would have achieved a desirable end. What is vitally necessary is that every farmer, small and large, should have accessible to him if he wants it, expert advice, guidance and counsel on matters of production and marketing which he himself is not equipped to resolve for himself.

In addition to that, it is urgently necessary and will constitute a long term programme to persuade certain elements amongst the agricultural community who do not appreciate the value of such services to appreciate them. I fully recognise that in the initial stages of providing an adequate service one of the tasks is to persuade the farmers themselves to avail of it. Where I differ with the present Minister is that he does not believe these services should be made available till they are asked for. I believe that to be one of the principal blocks on the road to true progress. I hope to have an opportunity of making such services available to the farmers. I hope to have the opportunity of coupling with that service an effective marketing organisation to ensure that the increased output that such educational and research services should make possible on the land can be effectively marketed at a reasonable profit to those who produce it.

To get that done I believe the initiative must largely be taken and should largely be taken by the Department of Agriculture acting under a Minister who cares, who is really concerned for the welfare of the farmers for whom he should answer to this House. The fault I find with the present occupant of that office is that he seems to be blandly indifferent to the fact that the share the agricultural community has of the national income is steadily declining, that the number of small farmers is declining every day, that the number of families being on their own holding is decreasing, that the whole social pattern of the countryside to which most of us belong at present or, at most, at one remove, is being changed to its great detriment.

The attitude of the Minister for Agriculture to this is not unreasonably illustrated by his reaction to one group of small farmers in Monaghan and Cavan who have approached him in circumstances in which they find themselves unable to dispose of what they have spent their substance to produce, and are told in his statement today that he preferred to see them capturing export markets than complaining about moderate competition in the home market. I do not think that is the attitude a Minister for Agriculture should take up. So long as this Minister adheres to that attitude agriculture will decline. Farmers will feel themselves frustrated and abandoned by the Minister who is supposed to represent their interests in Oireachtas Éireann. I believe with profound regret that that is a fact today, and I hope that after next September it will no longer be so.

We all look on this Estimate as the most important to come before the House in view of the fact that the agricultural industry contributes more to our welfare than all other industries put together. Our agricultural exports, at £89 million certainly show that the farmers are playing their part in producing greater quantities of goods for the home and export markets. It proves that, notwithstanding the decline in the rural population, those farmers who have stayed and who have become mechanised have succeeded to a great extent in increasing their output, to their own benefit, to their own credit, and to the benefit of the country as a whole. I have no doubt that with stable conditions and stable prices, the situation will improve. If the farmers could be reasonably assured that conditions will remain stable and markets reasonably certain for our exports, there would be a marked improvement in our agricultural economy.

Cattle are the predominant feature of our exports. The cattle industry springs from the dairy cow. Shortly after my election to this House, I put down a motion deploring the inadequacy of the price the farmers were getting for their milk. Reading through the White Paper circulated to us a few days ago in connection with our proposed entry into the Common Market, I was shocked to discover that the price of milk to our farmers is still 1/- a gallon below the average price paid to farmers in the Common Market countries. I appreciate that we got some slight increase after a great fight had been made. Considering the importance of the industry to the economy of the country as a whole, a still further increase would be justified. Indeed, such an increase would repay not alone the farmers but our economy generally. We must put the dairy industry on a solid footing. I stressed at that time the importance of diverting more and more milk into commodities other than butter. I welcome the decisions taken by certain co-operative groups to divert milk into cheese, chocolate crumb, dried milk, and various other commodities. For all these, there will be an expanding market when we enter the Common Market.

Our decision as to the Common Market is vitally important from the point of view of agriculture. I discussed the matter recently with the farmers in Cork. They were all unanimous in their opinion that, should Britain join, we should walk step by step with her and not just trail in after her. We discussed the position if Britain did not join or came to no decision within a reasonable time. It was the unanimous opinion that in that eventuality our Government should take the initiative and apply for some form of association with the Common Market, entering into an agreement with Britain to ensure that we would not lose our preferential treatment in that market. If we have to continue subsidising our dairy produce and our pigs to the British market, it would be far better for us to have some form of association with the Common Market because that would ensure us a tremendous opening for our dairy produce.

I sincerely hope that when the Taoiseach goes to Britain next week, he will be able to hammer out a satisfactory agreement with the British Government. I sincerely hope that Britain will realise the importance of our industries here, particularly our hard-pressed agricultural industry. Our farmers have to work very hard to eke out a living from the land. It is only right and proper that every step should be taken to ensure that the goods they work so hard to produce should be sold in the best markets obtainable. It is up to our Government to ensure that, when the time comes, we will have the produce to export to these markets.

We could double and treble agricultural output if the prices obtainable in the Common Market countries were freely available to our farmers. Instead of the depopulation of our rural areas continuing, there would be a flow back to rural Ireland. Young people would realise there was a reasonable opportunity of making a living from the land. That living has been denied them for many a long day. The recent farm survey proved that the income of the farmers especially the small farmers, was lower than that of any other section of the community. It is no wonder the young people fled the land. Their flight shows their intelligence in refusing to work for slave wages.

The Common Market will open up an opportunity denied to our farmers for centuries. Given an equal chance our farmers will take their place amongst the nations and will equal the best in Europe. The Irish farmer is as hardworking and as intelligent as his counterpart in Europe. Time will prove the truth of my statement. They have done a reasonably good job in increasing agricultural output in recent years, notwithstanding the decline in the number of people engaged in that activity.

I must welcome, on behalf of the farmers of Cork, the announcement by the Minister that he has decided to take up reactor store cattle from 1st October. The Minister was down in Cork some time ago and he is acceding to the unanimous wish of the committee of agriculture when he has decided to do that. There is very little use in half measures because while a few store reactors are left on the farm, the job is only half done. I am glad to say that reasonably good progress is being made in Cork in the eradication of bovine T.B. The percentage of reactor cows in my own area has been greatly reduced and when this big step is taken in October, I have great hope that eradication will be well in hand within the next 12 months. It is one of the most important steps that we farmers can take in an undertaking that is so important to the cattle industry.

The Minister also acceded to another request made at that meeting, that is, the reduction in the price of unmillable wheat. If the Minister came to Cork more often to hear our views on different matters, the farmers would benefit a good deal more. Those two steps he is taking as a result of suggestions made to him on the occasion of that visit will be of great benefit to us. The only pity is that it has not been done sooner. Such visits by the Minister to the committee of agriculture can be very helpful. The Minister gets first-hand information on the requirements of the area and I am very glad that some attention has been paid to the requests made to him.

The fertilisation of our land is a most important matter. Without the application of lime, phosphates and potash, we cannot increase the productivity of our land but we are making good progress in that respect. A couple of years ago, a very important experiment was carried out in the mountainous area of West Cork. The Minister was down for that occasion when an aeroplane scattered manures over that mountainous area. That experiment is now proving that these areas can be developed to such an extent that they can produce beef cattle and sheep if they are looked after in the proper way. One section of that mountain was properly fenced off and a rotational system was carried out. That part of the mountain can be seen today from several miles away with its luscious green grasses growing where only ferns and rushes grew before.

We must have further development along those lines in the mountainous and boggy areas of our country. That experiment has been sufficient to make me realise that a vast proportion of our land is going to waste for want of proper attention. To bring this land into proper production, it will be necessary to fence it off plot by plot until vast areas have been brought in. I am going to ask the Minister that grants should be made available to people with this type of land to enable them to fence it off. I know it is going to be a big step because we have a vast amount of such land and it will take time and money to fence it off and manure it, but when it is done, it will give a tremendous return in the number of cattle and sheep that can be grazed on it.

We have here in Dublin, factories which produce the netting wire and I have no doubt that they could make the posts also. They could turn out posts five feet or six feet in height to carry the wire. The whole scheme would be of tremendous benefit to the farmers and to the country as a whole. I appeal to the Minister to consider the suggestion and, if necessary, to make a survey of the land available for fencing, the amount of money it would cost and the benefit it would be to the country. The experiment we have already carried out will be the greatest indication to the Minister of what can be done.

That is the most important part of what I have to say about the Land Project at the moment. Many Deputies will deal with the delay in dealing with applications at the present time. I appreciate the difficulties when so many farmers are applying for reclamation work at the same time and I know that, with the limited staff available, all the applications cannot be dealt with at once. However, I think there is a little more red tape creeping in to the running of that scheme than there was some years ago. In the past, when the application was made by the farmer, he usually got the work done in a much shorter time. Even if he did have a little of the work done when the inspector called, he was usually allowed for it. At the moment, the regulations seem to be becoming more strict and instead of the officials going out on the farms, they are spending too much time in their offices. We seem to have greater officialdom, with less work being done. I would ask the Minister to cut out all this red tape and to get on with the work of land reclamation which is so essential if more land is to be brought into production.

The pig industry is a very important industry. The last time I spoke on this Estimate, I devoted most of my speech to it because of its importance to the owner of the small farm. I agree wholeheartedly with Deputy Dillon's suggestion regarding the provision of a market for all fat pigs. It is the only way in which we can open the eyes of the bacon curers of this country. The system of grading of pigs in the factory is one thing that has annoyed me all down through the years. If we could get a market for our fat pigs it would cut out a good deal of the red tape that is coming into the marketing of pigs at the moment.

I have always been of the opinion that it was not the business of the factory manager to grade the pigs at all. I have always been of the opinion that there should be a person in every factory working independently for the factory, the farmer and the consumer. The position is that the factories have their own man to do the grading. Human nature being what it is, I suppose if the farmers were to grade the pigs, they would not see themselves on the wrong side and all the pigs would be Grade A. When it is left to the other side to do all the grading, a good deal of discontent arises. There must be an overhaul of the system.

It would be even better if we could get a market abroad for heavy live pigs. That would solve the position. With the development of piggeries in the country at the present time, there will be a big increase in the pig population. Farmers are growing more grain, barley and oats, which, with the amount of unmillable wheat available, means that a greatly increased number of pigs will be produced. It is important that markets should be made available for the increased output from the new piggeries which are springing up all over the country. The Common Market may be the answer.

Bacon could be processed and tinned and a market found for it. Such a development for the export market could open up a great future for the Irish farmer. Processing of bacon is a matter that is worth considering, just as processed beef and lamb can be made available for the export market.

We must export if we are to survive as a nation. Our chief source of exports is the land and the farms of Ireland. I have always held the view that the soundest economic policy for this country is to have industries based on the land and on the produce of our farms, rather than industries for which we have to import all the raw material. There is plenty of raw material in this country, if only it were availed of to the fullest extent. We have not done that and we are not doing it yet. There is a great deal to be done in the processing of food for the export market. It is a matter to which scientists could give a considerable amount of thought. We should make absolutely sure that when our goods are marketed, they can compete with the goods of any country in the world.

The farmers, on whose behalf I am speaking, will do their part in producing the goods, if the scientists and the industrialists will do their part in processing them. I would ask all to co-operate in developing our trade with other countries. Money spent in the development of industries based on Irish agriculture is money well spent.

The Estimate for the Department of Agriculture should give us all food for serious thought. The Minister did mention that he is contemplating a new scheme for attesting herds. The first year I came into this House, I spoke about all the different groups going into one farm to test the same herd. It is about time this business finished and that the various organisations came together and developed one decent scheme for the recording of milk yields. Cow testing associations are still in existence in some areas and we have the A.I. stations doing progeny testing. If the various groups came together and developed one good scheme, it would be far better. It may not be as simple at it should be, but whatever difficulties there are should be ironed out for the common good. The percentage of our cows on test is miserably low. That should be a matter for far greater importance, a matter urgent enough for the Minister to tackle as soon as possible and to have one decent scheme for the recording of herds.

The recording of the bulls at the A.I. stations is very important. Our store cattle are good. I know some pressure is being brought to bear on the Minister to import Charollais cattle. I do not know if it is wise to do so. I would be slow to express an opinion on it because I am not sufficiently conversant with it. I know the dairy breeds we have, such as the Friesian and the Shorthorn, are giving satisfaction. I know that the Herefords and the Blacks are giving equally good satisfaction for beef production. To import a new breed could have, perhaps, serious effects. I do not know. The Minister would be wise in being cautious in that matter, lest, in importing the new breed of cattle, we may import disease with it.

We are very fortunate in that our cattle are disease-free. We have some bovine tuberculosis, but we do not look on that as being serious. We are very fortunate in having what I believe are the healthiest cattle in the world, and every effort should be made to ensure that that record is maintained. It is of vital importance to us that the good name which has been built up for our cattle over the years be maintained in the future. The present breeds we have will succeed in doing that, and the Minister should be slow in departing from them.

This question of depopulation of the rural areas is something that is common knowledge to everybody.

That is welcome news.

I did not interrupt the Deputy when he was talking and I think I am entitled to make my contribution.

Do not be cross — I am sorry.

I could have easily interrupted the Deputy if I knew what he was saying where he is sitting over there. Consequently, I have not anything to say on what he said.

In my opinion, the depopulation of the rural areas is two-fold. One part of it is concerned with the farmers' children. That has always been the case. Everyone of us is aware that a farm, unless it is an exceptionally large one, cannot give a livelihood to every one of the children of the farmer. The result is that when they can earn their own living, they leave the land and go into the professions, the trades and many other walks of life outside the land. I believe that system will continue. I have no hesitation in saying that at least 75 per cent. of those engaged in the trade and professions throughout the country have come directly from rural Ireland.

The other part of depopulation, which is a source of worry, is the fact that the rural workers are leaving the land. There are many reasons that is happening. First, the farmer is not paying these workers sufficient to induce them to remain on the land. There is not available to them many of the amenities available to those who go into the towns or who emigrate. From the beginning of what I might call the industrial revival here, I have known many families whose worker members were divided, one section remaining in the rural area and the other going into the towns to work in industry. It inevitably happens, even as far back as 25 or more years ago, that the young man who left the country and came into the town enjoyed a wage at least twice what was paid to his brother working on the land for the farmer. While that condition prevailed, it was hard to expect any farm labourer to remain on the land.

We know that in any part of rural Ireland in which there are factories or good employment available in the towns, there is a tendency for the rural part to become denuded of workers. Against that, there is a fact I often wondered about. In Tipperary, Waterford and Kilkenny, as far as I know, no labourers cottage is vacant. It would seem to me that until we have cottages all over the place, and nobody looking for them, there is room for more building in rural Ireland if we are to keep the people on the land. If a cottier has a family of five or six and they remain in that cottage until they are grown up, it is reasonable to expect they will wish to be married, but it is impossible for them even to contemplate marriage if they cannot get a house to live in. There is a hope that they might get a house or a flat if they go into a town, but if they remain in the rural portion outside the town, they can get neither. Consequently, they must put marriage out of their minds or else come into the town or go to some other country.

There is another aspect. Farming in this country is changing.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.
The Dáil adjourned at 5 p.m. until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 18th July, 1961.
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