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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 18 Jul 1961

Vol. 191 No. 7

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

Debate resumed on the following motion:
"That the Estimate be referred back for reconsideration."—(Deputy Dillon).

The debate on the Estimate for Agriculture is usually interesting and sometimes rather lively but, on this occasion, should evoke more interest than it ordinarily does because of the proximity of the general election, when agricultural policy will be flogged at every crossroads and because of the obvious likelihood of our entry into the European Economic Community.

The Minister has stated that the question of our joining the Common Market has been debated already but there are some specific matters associated with our agricultural policy that could in all decency be mentioned here. There are some pertinent questions to which the people would like the answers. It should be within the province of the Minister to give this information and I am sure it is readily available in the Department at any time from the statistical records. People who are vitally interested in our agricultural economy and agriculturists in general would like to know the gross agricultural output of the free nations of Europe, that is, the non-Communist nations. How much of that product is consumed within the free nations and how much is exported? What percentage of British agricultural produce finds its way into other European countries? The answers to these questions would clarify our position very considerably and would ease the mind of the people which is at present so confused with regard to our entry into the European Economic Community.

I was rather amazed to read in today's papers that the Taoiseach said prior to his departure last evening that they were going to London to get the British view on the Common Market. That is rather belated. It is rather pathetic that a statement like that should be made. The Government should have known long before now what the British view is with regard to our inclusion in the European Economic Community. Have the Government any view with regard to joining the European Economic Community? Has there been any definite assertion?

The Minister has referred to the progress made in regard to agricultural output in the last 12 months. We were all edified to hear that the gross agricultural output was something like £195,000,000 in value. That is very creditable. The Minister said that, leaving out the stock changes, it would be £13,000,000 more than in 1959 and, including those stock changes, it would be £2,000,000 more than in 1959. What is significant is that our agricultural exports totalled £89,000,000 during 1960, which still remains the most important factor in our whole economy. By deducting £89,000,000 from £195,000,000 one gets an idea of the amount consumed in this country.

We were glad to hear, also, that £8.5 millions worth of our agricultural exports found their way into the United States of America. If we join the European Economic Community I hope we shall still have an opportunity to extend our exports to the United States. It is no harm to refer to the danger to our agricultural economy in the event of our joining the Economic Community. Human beings are so unpredictable in this age and there are so many upheavals from time to time that a good deal will depend on the goodwill of those already in the Economic Community. No doubt a good deal of thought has been given to this whole question of the Rome Treaty. It would be a pity if it were not going to be honoured by those who have already joined or who are about to become members of the Economic Community. It seems likely that in the foreseeable future the Economic Community will absorb the Free Trade Area already in existence in Europe; and this one, large, body, embracing all the non-Communist countries of Europe, should be a potent force and should safeguard very effectively the economic position with regard to agriculture generally throughout Europe.

At the gates of Europe, we have 1,250,000,000 people in Asia, excluding the Russian territories there. It would be interesting if the Minister could tell us what percentage of agricultural produce from Europe finds its way into Asia. Again, at the gates of Europe, we have something approaching 400,000,000 people in Africa, about eight per cent, of the total world population as against over 50 per cent, in Asia. It would be interesting to know what percentage of agricultural produce from Europe finds its way into Africa. If there are possibilities of exploring markets in these two continents for our agricultural produce, it would be safe to predict a great future for agriculture within the Economic Community.

We were glad to read in the Minister's statement that our exports to all other countries, outside of the United States and Great Britain and Northern Ireland, amounted to £9,000,000. Perhaps the Minister would indicate in his reply to what countries had our exports access in this £9,000,000.

The Minister dwelt at length on T.B. eradication, which has already cost our people something like £12½ million. It is extraordinary to find when one travels through the country —I am sure Deputies who are members of the T.B. eradication committees in their respective counties know this full well — there is a good deal of confusion in the mind of our farmers still. There is a good deal of scepticism still with regard to T.B. eradication. They are still asking why had we this at all. They have not been sufficiently informed and encouraged by information issued from the Department as to the necessity for T.B. eradication. We are in this scheme simply because Great Britain is in it. We go into the Common Market simply because Great Britain goes in. We have no alternative, if we are to preserve our markets across the Irish Sea, but to rid our livestock of T.B.

It is gratifying, I suppose, to find that outside of Dublin, Kilkenny and the six Munster counties, if we include Clare, all areas are now classified as attested or at the clearance area stage. As the Minister rightly said, the difficulty with Munster is very grave because of the enormous number of cattle reared there. I often wondered why the scheme was not initiated in Munster, where cattle are produced in such numbers. Munster was the supply source for many counties. Why the scheme was not introduced there, I do not know. If the maximum co-operation of the people could be sought, I believe that, even at this late stage, much greater and rapid progress could still be made.

It is true that the incidence of T.B. is low among young cattle, yearlings and up to two years old. After that, the incidence increases. Should it not be possible for the people, in their own interest, to segregate the young cattle from the two year olds and older cattle. We all know that many of these are out-lyers for the whole winter. They could be effectively segregated from the cows and bigger cattle on the farm. It is rather ridiculous to find people engaged in T.B. eradication and yet using the same houses week after week and month after month without any effort to disinfect these premises, and thus eradicate entirely the germs that cause T.B., after their reactors have been sold out of the farm.

The Minister made no reference at all to the £250,000 provided in former Estimates for market research abroad in respect of agricultural produce. That is very important. For some mysterious reason or other, there have been several reductions in prices for our cattle across the water. It is mystifying why that should be. Surely there should be some contacts across the water that would inform us in advance of market trends so that we would have stabilised prices at home? It is within the knowledge of us all that early last Spring many people sold cattle, whereas if they could have retained them they would have made £10 per head more in late February and March. The same thing happened in recent weeks when, for some reason or other, there was a sudden drop in prices. These things are all detrimental to any chance of stability or to maintaining confidence in the cattle business.

The Minister went on to deal with pigs. We were glad to hear that the number of pigs has increased in recent years. We have gone back now to the number we had in the early thirties, but we are still a long way behind the northern counties in our pig and bacon production. There is one dangerous factor, that is, the number going in for pig production as a business. Pig production should be safeguarded and left to the farmers who are traditionally engaged in pig production. No doubt, in the past, long before we got our freedom, the pig was a very important little animal on the farm. He often saved the unfortunate tenant from being evicted on to the roadside. A good deal of the offal of the home was consumable by pigs reared on the farm. Now that we have our own grain and rations, and are not so dependent on maize as we were in the old days, there is every reason to believe that the exploiter could come in, cash in on the situation, and go in for pig production in a large way.

I respectfully suggest to the Minister that grants for pig byres should be limited to those traditionally engaged in pig production, so that the position of the small producer will be safeguarded. In regard to the double byre grant, there are people who, of their own initiative put up in recent years piggeries of a very high standard. Before the double byre grant was available they had done this work and got the single grant. These men, who showed initiative and objectiveness in going in for a development of this kind, should be considered and the date of the award of the double byre grant should be retrospective to cover these few cases. I am sure only a few cases exist. I know of one very progressive young farmer who was late by only two or three months. He had his piggery completed before the announcement of the double byre grant and he had to be satisfied with the original grant.

It is comforting to find that 1960 has been a good milk year. We are all pleased to hear that, that the extra milk produced will go into milk powders in the new factories at Mallow and Killeshandra, and that the two cheese factories erected at Wexford and Waterford will consume a good deal of our milk. That will help to allay the fear that existed some years ago, that if we had overproduction of milk it would become a problem and that we would have to keep it subsidised in order to get our surplus butter into the foreign market.

With regard to agriculture in general, reading the notes from the Department, which are very helpful, I see that the total number of agricultural instructors in the Twenty Six Counties is 216. That number is grossly inadequate. If we had sufficient of these instructors, at least four times as many, we would make real progress in our farming activities — that is provided that the instructor is objective about his work and dedicated to it, and provided that he is co-operative at all times and provided he goes into the farms. These instructors can be of immense assistance to farmers particularly in modern times when chemical treatment of crops has to be resorted to, in order to save them from pests.

The instructors could also be helpful in planning the type of economy most suitable to the farmer. One instructor who is leaving our county was magnificent in that respect. He had a great flair for advising farmers about the layout of their farms and their buildings. We know that in olden days if the farmer improved his premises the landlord increased the rent and that killed incentive. Houses were very small and they kept building on to these houses making their last state worse than the first, whereas it would have been more economic if they had demolished the whole building and built from the very start. It is in regard to advice of this kind that the instructor could be most effective.

I often heard the Leader of the Opposition talk about the Parish Plan and having one instructor for each parish. I thought that would be a Utopian achievement if it could be done. Now I am convinced it could be done: we could have one to every couple of parishes and have all this scientific advice available which is so necessary if our agricultural economy is to survive and withstand the challenge from abroad.

The Minister also stated that we had 56 horticultural instructors. Proportionately speaking that figure strikes me as being inordinately high as against the 216 agricultural instructors. He also stated that we have 77 butter and poultry instructresses. There cannot be very many areas in the country where butter is still made in the homes. I know the value these people had in the past but their value is limited now because of the co-operative creameries and the Dairy Disposals Company.

We come now to the question of grain. I notice that the figures given by the Minister for wheat, barley and oats were all figures over the 400,000 mark and that they were very closely related to the number of tons produced in each kind. I cannot see the sense in growing wheat and then putting a levy on wheat when we produce it to excess. Something like 30 per cent, of our wheat went to the grist last year and the rest is a liability on the producer. I cannot see why it cannot be grown under contract and give all those who apply an opportunity by dividing the acreage between them. There are people who cash in on this situation and have been doing so over the years. People with a good deal of machinery are inclined to abuse that position and the only safeguard for the producer is the contract system which will also be a safeguard in regard to overproduction. I think it could be done conveniently and easily and it would give greater satisfaction in the end. The Exchequer would not be called on to bear the loss or the producers to subsidise the loss when there is overproduction of wheat.

These are the few remarks I wanted to make. We are glad that the information is so encouraging and we would like to see that progress maintained. There is a lot of leeway still to be made up in the agricultural economy, especially with regard to bovine tuberculosis. With the co-operation of the people, that could be effectively and expeditiously dealt with but somehow the people have lost confidence. They have lost it for one reason. It was always said of a beast, once a reactor always a reactor. That has been disproved. I know of cases where cows failed the T.B. test but came along afterwards and passed it although we are told by vets. of long experience that that was contrary to experience and belief. It shows how experimental the whole scheme was. To dissipate that want of confidence we will have to be more assertive and encouraging. The only way to get the farmers' confidence is to advise them kindly and effectively.

This is one of the most important Estimates that come before the House each year. The plight of the farmer has never been worse than in the last three or four years since the close of the Economic War. I am referring particularly to small farmers, whose flight has reached a crisis.

Hear, hear.

While it has been mentioned on several occasions by many speakers from all sides, the Government seem to be absolutely blind to what is happening. I want to tell the Minister that the country is rapidly going back into big farmers, even if farmers will farm the big areas that are being deserted by the small farmers. Conditions in the West of Ireland are particularly deplorable. Today Deputy McQuillan asked a question about the conditions in West Roscommon. It appears from the answer given by the Tánaiste, on behalf of the Taoiseach, that the Government are totally unaware of conditions in the country until they are brought to their notice by way of question or raised in debate here. Some little attention will be given to a particular area when it is brought to their notice. If it is the Government's policy, and it appears to have been their policy since 1957, to pack the small farmer out of the country, I think it would be much better for them to come out into the open and say so.

That is pure nonsense.

It is not.

I invite Deputy Moher to go through County Mayo, Galway, up to Donegal, and not forgetting Clare or Kerry——

I shall give the real reasons in a few minutes.

I am describing what has happened in the last three or four years. I do not like saying this, but the inter-Party Government on two occasions brought some measure of confidence to the small farmers and the very moment there was a change of Government in 1957 — achieved by means of a trick; we know only too well how that change was brought about — a vast number of people gave up, locked up their homes and went with their families to England.

Last Sunday in my constituency a public meeting, called on behalf of Macra na Feirme, the National Farmers' Association and the Irish Countrywomen's Association passed a resolution deploring the purchase of large tracts of agricultural land by big farmers. While the majority of the people who spoke at that meeting were in full agreement that the Government should take some steps to stop the sale of arable land to foreigners, there were speakers from the northern part of the county who said: "Let the foreigners come in. Let them come from Britain, from Germany and from elsewhere. We have completely lost confidence in this country and we see no future for the small farmer. Let anybody who likes buy the land."

That does not arise under this Vote. It may be relevant under another head.

I will put this question to the Chair: surely the Minister for Agriculture is the Minister responsible for looking after the interests of the farmers, whether they be large or small. I was just quoting an incident to prove that the small farmers have lost confidence in the Government.

The matters of the sale and the purchase of land by people outside the country do not arise on this Estimate.

It is a deplorable situation that hundreds of small farmers should stand up and say that the foreigners may come in and buy the land, as far as they are concerned. The Government seem to have ample money for any purpose other than to help the small farmers. After all, agriculture is still the principal industry in this country. That being so, why abandon the principal industry and try to establish new ones of whose future we cannot be assured? Surely those who have been bred on the land should not be run out of their own country. Time and time again, we have had Deputies from the West of Ireland citing cases of whole villages going completely derelict. The dwelling houses, many built with the help of Government grants, have been closed up and outhouses left to fall down.

If it is the purpose of the Government to banish the small farmers, if the Government think the small farmers are nuisances, why not come out into the open and say so? One of the terrible things about the policy of the Government is that while the larger farmers are lucky enough to get fixed prices for their produce, the small farmers have no such advantage for the produce they are able to sell. I cannot see how a farmer whose holding has a valuation of from £20 to £25 can make a living. The only small farmer who can make ends meet at the moment is the man who has some sort of income outside farming.

One of the heaviest burdens small farmers have to bear at the moment is that of rates and I would ask the Minister to take this matter up with the Minister for Local Government. Definitely, the Minister for Agriculture should regard any tax on land as something to which he should give very careful consideration, no matter what other Minister proposes it. If there is not a substantial derating of agricultural land soon, as well as fixed guaranteed prices for beef, mutton, bacon and the other principal items produced by small farmers, the flight from the small holdings will be even worse than it is now and a time will come when entire townlands throughout the West of Ireland will be owned by one man.

On the question of the rating of agricultural out-offices, it is quite true that grants are available for their erection. But no sooner are they erected than they are taxed. This is causing a tremendous amount of discontent throughout the West of Ireland and is forcing out of the country the few small farmers still remaining there. There is an anomaly here which the Minister had better look into. Take the case of a farmer who sleeps until noon and then spends the evening in a public house, letting his buildings fall in, while his more industrious neighbour across the road keeps his buildings in good repair and does his best to help the country. In the latter case, a reviser comes along and slaps a tax on the industrious man. That is a matter the Minister should look into.

On the matter of land reclamation, I would ask the Minister to give first attention to the smaller and poorer areas. Most of the bigger areas have been dealt with by this time. From now on, the small farmers should get first attention because, for historical reasons, the small farmers own the worst of the land and two or three acres reclaimed for them would give infinitely more satisfaction than a bigger area for more wealthy farmers.

I do not know what has happened to the ground limestone scheme: it seems to have been given a slow death. Those engaged in that business are finished and the quantity of ground lime-stone now used seems to be much smaller. Perhaps the reason for that is that it was Deputy Dillon who introduced that scheme and the land reclamation scheme and that the Government are anxious to choke it off for that reason. That is a very poor way to run a country — to victimise a number of farmers and workers because a Minister's political opponent was responsible for those schemes.

The Minister said that £89 million worth of agricultural produce was exported. There does not seem to be much point in stressing this — it has been brought to the Government's attention many times in the past few years — but what about the 200,000 people who have been exported since March, 1957? I wonder, if it were possible to fix a cash price on exports of human flesh and blood, what would the total be for the 200,000 boys and girls, the vast majority of them from agricultural communities, who have had to leave the country, due to the Government's inertia and indifference to what is happening in small holdings throughout the country? The only hope I can see is that these small farmers will take action against such indifference and inactivity in the coming general election. The sooner that election comes, the better so that the Minister can be thrown out of office.

Once again, this Estimate shows a considerable increase in the amount of money allocated in respect of bovine tuberculosis. The estimate for this purpose this year is over £7,000,000, which is a very considerable proportion of the total money available to the State for all purposes. It shows the anxiety of the Government to rid our herds of bovine tuberculosis. It shows that they recognise the importance and the urgency of this question.

In the early stages of our efforts to eradicate bovine tuberculosis, we found it difficult to impress on our farmers the urgency and importance of this matter. This was understandable enough because at that time the differential in price between attested cattle and unattested cattle was small and it was possible to sell unattested cattle freely. However, the position today is very different because there is a considerable differential between the price of tested and unattested cattle and it is becoming more and more difficult to sell unattested cattle and for these reasons the farmer has an incentive to press on with the work.

In the clearance areas, progress was hampered for a considerable time by the shortage of veterinary surgeons and assistants. I am glad to see that in County Louth the position has now eased very considerably and the progress made is very good. Farmers are very anxious to have their herds attested. Since my county was declared a clearance area, the number of reactors is low.

I have always advocated on this Estimate that the number of our agricultural instructors should be increased. I believe that the agricultural community are getting good value for the money spent on instructors but I feel that until we have sufficient instructors, we will not be able to get the maximum benefit. The limited number of county instructors available at present have much of their time taken up in dealing with problems which crop up from time to time and they have not much time left for the purpose of generally helping the farmers to improve their output and so on. The instructors we have are generally regarded as tillage and grass experts and training is more or less along those lines. It would be helpful if we had a livestock adviser in each county, to advice the farmers on the proper layout of farm buildings, proper heating and so on.

Such advice would be particularly valuable in connection with pig production. Pigs need a high degree of care to be profitable and livestock advisers would be very helpful in regard to this particular aspect of agriculture. So long as the county committees of agriculture have to pay a very considerable proportion of the cost in the provision of instructors, we will never get the required number. For that reason, I would strongly advocate that the grant for this purpose should be increased.

This year, we have a further large increase in the subsidies under the heading of lime and fertilisers. There are few actions which the Government have taken which are as advantageous to the farmers as this particular one. I said before — and it cannot be repeated often enough — that the subsidisation of fertilisers was one of the best things done by this Government. They have the twofold beneficial effect of increasing production and, at the same time, reducing costs.

I was glad also to note that the Government had decided to increase the subsidy on lime. It is clear that we must keep a balance between the price of lime and the price of fertilisers. Over the past number of years, we had a fall in the amount of lime used by our farmers. To a large extent, the responsibility for this was the fact that because fertilisers became so cheap, and the return from them so much quicker that many farmers were inclined to buy fertilisers rather than lime. We recognise that this is a very short-sighted policy. To use fertilisers on land which is in need of lime is a pure waste of money.

Since the subsidies were put on fertilisers, there has also been a considerable improvement in our grasslands. Over the years there has been an improvement in the quality of our pigs but I feel that the improvement is not rapid enough. We will have to make a greater effort to improve the quality of our pigs. One reason we are not progressing as quickly as we should is that while we are particularly careful about the selection of first-class boars, we are not nearly as careful with regard to the selection of sows. Many sows are kept which are not of top-grade quality. I believe that until we can do something to check this, we will not improve the quality of our bacon as rapidly as we would like to.

I recognise that this is a very difficult problem and I do not pretend that there is a simple solution to it. The increased grants for piggeries has resulted in a much greater demand for these grants. The increase in the grants for cow byres is also appreciated by the farmer and it is an encouragement towards further efforts by him as is also the increase in the grants for repair and reconstruction of farm buildings.

It is obvious that the possibilities of the fruit and vegetable processing in Mallow are tremendous, and are particularly welcome in a country such as ours which is dependent in the main on agriculture. There is a high cash return and a high labour content involved in the production of fruit and vegetables, but we should keep in mind that we in this country have no tradition in the growing of fruit and vegetables on a large scale. A high degree of technical skill and knowledge is essential.

For that reason, we need more instructors trained in horticulture. We need more research both from the growing point of view and from the point of view of the various diseases which may affect our vegetables and fruit. Prices for the fruit and vegetables processed in this way are good but unless proper care and attention are given to the crops, the farmers, instead of having a profit, may well find themselves facing serious losses. I am hopeful that the problem of marketing and price fluctuations may be overcome when we develop this new system. Our experience has been that efforts to develop the fruit and vegetable business up to now have not met with success because the matter was dependent too much on outside factors such as the unpredictability of the markets, the fluctuations of prices and so on. Prices for a particular commodity might be exceptionally good in one year and very often the farmers would plough back their profits into this particular aspect of agriculture so as to increase their output for the following year, only to find that prices had collapsed and that they were left at a total loss.

At the moment, because the plant is in Mallow, the County Louth farmers do not consider it economic to grow fruit and vegetables on a large scale. Louth is an intensive tillage county. We have first-class farmers and also we have an industrial tradition there. For these reasons weighty consideration should be given to the setting up of the next plant for this process in Louth.

The Government recognised the need for better credit facilities for farmers when they introduced the Agricultural Credit Act thereby ensuring that the development of agriculture would not be hampered by lack of capital. It is to be hoped that there will be greatly increased activity in the Agricultural Credit Corporation in the future. It is in this matter of credit that I feel there is the greatest difference between this Government and the last Government. Towards the end of the Coalition period, credit dried up completely. Our farmers were called in by the banks and asked to pay back loans within a very short time. Now, the opposite is true. The commercial banks as well as the Agricultural Credit Corporation are anxious to facilitate farmers in every way. Credit is the lifeblood of agriculture. I hope full use will be made of the new facilities to the farmers.

Beidh scéil eile ann, sar i bhfad.

It has been said in my constituency that the farmers were not paying back the loans they had got from the banks. In other words, the inference was that they were using the money for non-productive reasons. That is a slur on the farmers of my constituency. I am aware that the repayment of loans by the farmers was almost 100 per cent. That proves that the farmers who got the money from the banks made use of it for production. It also proves they were in a position to pay back the money they borrowed.

At this stage, it is difficult to assess the position of agriculture in the Common Market. Generally speaking, the prospects appear bright but, to get a true picture of what the position may be, one must take into consideration a number of factors. We know that prices for agricultural produce are high at the present time in the Common Market countries. We feel that for certain types of our produce there is a large and expanding market in these countries. We know also that Britain is a cheap food importing country where prices for foods must rise if Britain enters the Common Market. That, of course, is a relatively rosy picture as far as we are concerned. Whether or not it is a true picture is another question.

For example, will prices for agricultural goods remain at their present level in the Common Market countries as tariff and quota restrictions are gradually reduced? We hope they will but, if they are not likely to, we feel that our experts should give their opinion in this matter and should advise our farmers on how best to meet the challenge with which they may be faced. Let us not make plans on the basis of what we should like to happen but rather on the basis of what expert opinion tells us is likely to happen.

The Minister for Agriculture is in charge of one of the most important Departments in this State. His speech on Thursday last was very short. Coming at the end of his period of office, one would expect he would give a review not alone of the past year but of the past four years and of the progress he considered he helped to bring about in agriculture. Instead, his speech was one of the shortest we have had for many years. Does the shortness of his speech denote the interest taken by the Government in agriculture? That is the point I turned over in my mind. Recently we heard speeches from two Ministers of a divided ministry, the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Minister for Transport and Power when introducing their Estimates. They took well over one hour and one and a half hours to give a review of the work of their respective Departments in the past year. I doubt if the speech of the Minister for Agriculture lasted more than half an hour.

I felt that this was an opportunity for the Minister in charge of the greatest industry of all in this country and of what will be the greatest industry for many years to come, no matter how many industries we promote in this country, to present to this House a picture of his work during his term of office. For the next quarter of a century, agriculture will be the outstanding industry in this country. I expected that the Minister would go much more fully into all aspects of that industry. Does it show the interest taken by the Taoiseach and by the other members of the Government in agriculture? Now, coming at the end of the Government's period of office, I should like to point out certain matters. I want to refer to some of the promises which the Minister and the other members of his Party made in the Kilkenny by-election in 1956 which I may say had a big hand in leading to the Government's attaining office following the general election in 1957.

After all, it is four years ago. The Minister may wish to forget these promises. The Government may wish to forget the inducements they offered to the people of the country and to the farmers of the country to return them to office rather than the inter-Party Government. At that time, there had been a reduction in the price of wheat by the inter-Party Government. That reduction was brought about by the increased acreage of wheat. The then Minister for Agriculture felt that the only way to level the acreage and the production of wheat in relation to the requirements of the country was to reduce the price of wheat. That decision was not well taken and it was attacked very solidly by the then Opposition.

I consider that, in the circumstances, the action by the then Minister was quite right. He felt wheat was being overproduced, and overproduced not by the small farmers but by speculators, by people coming into the country and getting into wheat growing on a large scale. In order to stem the use of land for wheat growing, the Minister reduced the price of wheat. The then Opposition, the Fianna Fáil Party, said: "Put us back in office and we will give you 82/6d. per barrel for your wheat. We are the people who advocated home-grown wheat, the growing of wheat in this country. Put us back in office and we will continue our policy of encouraging the growing of wheat in this country."

In the course of the next few months, within a very short time, the Minister for Agriculture and his representatives will have an opportunity of going before the people in County Kilkenny and in the south-eastern areas and of explaining why they did not keep their promise to maintain the price of wheat, as they said they would.

Where was that made?

In Carlow-Kilkenny, by the man who was expected to become the new Minister.

By whom?

By Deputy Corry.

We were listening to him.

Give me the quotation.

I cannot give a quotation from Mullinavat. I think the Minister, as well as Deputy Corry, gave the quotation.

I deny that in any shape or form, at any time, either in private or public, I made a statement of that nature.

Oh, yes, because——

I deny it.

The usual practice is that if a Minister denies making a statement, his denial is accepted.

It is a pity we did not have a tape recorder.

It was the shadow Minister at the time who said it. He was not appointed Minister. He said that if they were returned to power——

It was the Ministers at that time who were shadows and not the Deputy to whom Deputy Crotty is referring.

The shadow Minister for Agriculture at that time made a definite statement that if he were returned to power, he would restore the price to 82/6 per barrel. There is no use in denying that he made that statement. I think the Minister is a little confused.

I am saying I did not make that statement at any time. Unless the Deputy can quote me, he should be decent about it.

I am decent about it. Will the Minister deny that Martin Corry made that statement in my hearing?

I know what I am responsible for.

I should have said "Deputy Corry" not "Martin Corry."

I am not saying he made that statement, either.

We heard him.

If I have anything to say I do not commission anyone else to say it for me.

There is no question about it. Deputy Corry deserved to be Minister, if everyone got their rights.

That does not arise.

The price of wheat was reduced, with the result that the price of flour was doubled.

When was it reduced?

Flour, which is made from wheat, was actually doubled in price by the Government. Not only did they not increase the price of wheat but they actually doubled the price of flour that should have been maintained at the ordinary price. The last harvest was one of the worst we have had for many years and as a result, 25 per cent. of the crop was millable into flour and 75 per cent. was left unmillable in the stores for feeding.

Bord Gráin have taken over the disposal of wheat but apparently for the first four months after the harvest, not one barrel of wheat was disposed of. Several millers complained that their stores were chockful of unmillable wheat. Neither Bord Gráin nor the Government attempted to handle one barrel of that wheat which involved extra cost through storage charges, interest charges, labour charges and various other costs that follow on the storage of wheat. Still, not one barrel was handled up to February of this year, although the Government and Bord Gráin knew last October that there was going to be a surplus of unmillable wheat. October, November, December, January and February passed before one barrel was handled.

Instead of offering to put the farmers — as we would expect them to offer — in a competitive position in the overseas market, they offered our unmillable wheat at anything from £16 to £18 per ton while importing pollard at £20 per ton. I believe there is something radically wrong in that situation. The Department must have lost their grip on the position completely.

We have seen today the published statement of our present bad balance of payments position and yet the Government are exporting wheat at cheap prices and importing pollard. There is something radically wrong with a Government and a Department of Agriculture which carried on in that line of business. We are exporting our wheat of a reasonable quality at £16 or £18 per ton — not fit for milling into flour but good animal feeding — and we are bringing in the sweepings of the lofts of other countries at £20 per ton.

I also thought the Minister would have reviewed the position with regard to barley. He said there was a slight increase in the acreage of barley. During our time, the acreage of barley went up year by year since Deputy Dillon first introduced the strains of feeding barley which brought a new face to agriculture in this country. The yield of malting barley was increased very considerably and there was a floor on the price of feeding barley which enabled the farmers to have some stability. After all, one of the things the farmers want is a certain amount of stability, and they should have it so far as possible. I know the Government cannot give that stability in all lines of agriculture but they should give it in certain lines.

Feeding barley is one of the lines that should have given encouragement to the farmers to produce more. It was the policy of the previous Minister and of Fine Gael to produce all the coarse grain it was possible to produce in this country. I think that was a very sensible policy. There are many commodities which we cannot produce here and many things which we have to import for industry. For that reason, all the barley that can be produced should be produced, and inducements should be given to the farmers to produce the full amount of our requirements.

As I say, at that time, the policy of the Minister was to produce all the coarse grain requirements of this country. In order to further that policy, he curtailed the importation of maize in the first months after the harvest. In fact, there was no importation of maize until January and the heavy end of the feeding barley was taken from the farmers. The reverse of that policy is now taking place. The Government are encouraging the importation of maize, whereas the previous Government felt we should produce it locally. It has been proved over and over again that while barley is slower in production, it is very effective in the feeding of pigs. The balance of payments position comes in because if we could produce more we would be saved having to import so much. It has been brought home to the people of Ireland today that the balance of payments position has gone very badly against this country.

I come now to the price of cattle. In 1956 the price of cattle went down very heavily. The cause of the fall was known to the Government. It was the dumping of meat from the Argentine on the British market. Now we find in practically the fifth year of this Government's term of office that the Minister and the Government cannot explain the cause of the slump in the price of cattle. The Minister should be very grateful to the Opposition that they have not made propaganda out of that slump.

In 1956 when the price of cattle slumped fairly heavily, due, as I have said, to a known cause, the flooding of the British market with Argentine cattle, Deputy Childers, as he was then, said: "Farmers, turn to some other business rather than producing cattle." Imagine our brilliant young Minister telling the farmers they should turn to some other line of business. In the Irish Press it was featured: “Cattle prices down again.” The Minister and this Government should be very grateful to the present Opposition that we did not play up the slump in cattle prices thus depressing further the price of cattle as the speeches of the Opposition did at that time. It was given to the then Minister to tell the people — and I think he did very well in telling them — that if they held on to their cattle for a certain number of months they would come back to a reasonable price, and they did. The present Minister has no notion what is the cause of the slump in the price of cattle.

We are very glad that the pig population has increased and that pig exports have gone up considerably. It is a great thing for this country because it is an industry in which the very small farmer can engage as well as the very big farmer. We hope these exports will increase further in the years to come. However, do we look for what was the foundation for that increase in activity in the production of pigs? Have we far to look for it? Do we not look to the policy of the previous Minister for Agriculture in guaranteeing the price of grade A pigs? As I mentioned earlier, the Government should as far as lies in their power — I know it cannot be done in regard to cattle — give security with regard to products such as pigs, barley and wheat. A tribute should be paid to Deputy Dillon who was the first Minister for Agriculture to introduce a guaranteed price for grade A pigs. If the people have something solid to go on, if they get a reasonable price for a commodity, they will produce it.

The Minister for Finance, Dr. Ryan, in recent times spoke about the wonderful change in conditions for farmers, that they can go into banks and get any amount of credit; the bank managers are only waiting to dish it out to them. He praised the bank managers. He said it showed the healthy state of the country when farmers can do that. What is the position of the Government? There was an opportunity for the Government to give credit to creditworthy farmers under section B of the Land Project. Section A was available for the farmers who could put up their share of the capital required to carry out land reclamation. Section B was for the farmer who was not in that position, the small farmer or the larger farmer who wanted to get his land stocked and who could not devote so much dry money to that purpose; possibly he was educating his family. Section B was for such farmers and the cost of the farmer's share of the reclamation would be put on the annuity.

That was an ideal credit scheme for farmers but the first act of this Government when they came into office was to abolish that scheme which had been available for a number of years. That was a very bad start for any Government. That scheme put land into production, and, after all, increased production should be the aim of any Government.

It is very hard to understand why the Government cut the lime subsidy. Deputy Faulkner, who spoke before me, welcomed the increase, as we all do, in the subsidy on fertilisers but he pointed out that if you spread fertiliser on certain types of land without the required amount of lime the fertiliser will be wasted. The decision to cut the lime subsidy has practically closed the door of all these lime kilns and plants in the country. The increase which Deputy Faulkner welcomes only restores the subsidy to what it was when this Government came into office. They should have been encouraging people to use more lime over the past four years.

Another thing this Government did was to remove the double cow byre grant when they came into office. It is absolutely essential in the eradication of bovine tuberculosis to bring cow byres up to a proper standard. As Deputy Manley mentioned, some people had very hard luck because when the grant was restored they were only a fortnight away from being entitled to it. In regard to the people who had the courage and the enterprise to go ahead without the grant, the Minister should make some entitlement to the grant retrospective to six or twelve months ago.

One thing for which the people will be grateful to the Opposition is the spotlighting of the question of beet. Since this Government came into office a new policy has been brought out. Previously all the sugar required at home and for export was produced from beet grown in this country. A few years ago this Government, in order to save a few pounds possibly — although that was not given as an excuse — allowed the importation of foreign raw sugar for processing here and at the same time refused contracts to our farmers. I remember Deputy Esmonde putting a question to the then Minister for Industry and Commerce, now the Taoiseach, on the 23rd April, 1959, as to why farmers were refused contracts and why foreign sugar was being imported. The former Minister for Industry and Commerce replied that they were handling as much as they could handle in this case.

There were several supplementaries and I remember asking the Minister if he was prepared to give a licence to the Sugar Company to import raw sugar while refusing to give contracts to grow beet to those who applied for them and who had grown beet in previous years. The Minister replied: "The Deputy misunderstands the position. The Sugar Company is giving contracts for all the beet they can handle. The import of raw sugar outside the refining campaign period has nothing to do with that." That looked reasonable on the face of it. But what do we find now? Due to pressure put on the Government by the Opposition here, beet growers have now been given contracts this year for 12,000 extra acres of beet.

It is the Minister for Industry and Commerce who gives a licence for the importation of sugar. The Government were allowing the Irish Sugar Company — possibly requesting the company — to import raw sugar to be processed here while, at the same time, refusing extra contracts to our farmers. Indeed, not alone were they refusing extra contracts but they were cutting down on contracts that had been available for years before. The thanks of the beet growers are due to the Opposition for the force of their arguments and for their putting the spotlight on that peculiar situation in which an article that could be produced here was actually imported from abroad to be processed in our factories. I am glad that this 12,000 extra acres will be grown this year and completely handled by the Sugar Company in complete contradiction of the Minister's statement that the company gave contracts for all the beet they could handle. This year they can handle 12,000 extra acres.

We welcome the policy of fruit and vegetable growing and the setting-up of the processing plant in Mallow. But the Government appear to have no proper interest in agriculture. Indeed the interest shown is admirably demonstrated by the fact that the Minister's opening review here occupied half an hour with passing references to many important aspects of that industry. The lack of grasp of the situation by the Government is highlighted by Deputy Loughman's reference to the prosperity of our farmers. He said there never was such prosperity in the country as there is at present. The yardstick by which he measures the prosperity is that he passed by Brittas Bay recently and saw a great many cars there. He assumed, for what reason I do not know, that every car there was a farmer's car taking the farmer and his family to the seaside on Sunday afternoon.

He was talking about the cars last year, too, outside the churches on Sunday. Evidently the farmers should have walked.

That appears to be the argument. Can anyone really believe there is prosperity in agriculture when, over the past four years, 50,000 people have lost employment in the agricultural industry? I would prefer to measure this situation by that yardstick as against Deputy Loughman's. That decrease in employment on the land is due to the handling of the agricultural industry by the present Government.

We have listened to the "calamity howl" by many speakers on the Opposition benches. Deputy Blowick charged the Government with failure to declare that it was their policy to drive the small farmer in the West off the land. I want to deal now with the problems of the small farmer not only in Ireland but in different parts of the world. There is emigration from the small farms in the West. There is migration from the small farms in Scotland and from large farms in the United States of America. Anybody who examines the statistics will find that, over the past 20 years, rural areas in America have been denuded of almost half their population. There is a movement from the rural areas to the industrial belts. In these belts there are minimum hours and maximum rates. There are conditions of employment. There is mass migration from the rural areas of Scotland; and those who are familiar with Britain know that the people are moving in to the industrial belts in Britain.

I have a recollection of the pattern in the West of Ireland from the mid' twenties. I was an emigrant myself in that period. I saw these people come and go as seasonal migrants. They came in the Spring and returned home in the late Autumn, remained at home for Christmas, and moved out again the following Spring. I do not have to recall to Deputies the conditions under which they lived. They were more than adequately pinpointed in a pamphlet published by Peadar O'Donnell. That pattern continued until the was broke out. In the post-war period we had the building boom. The former migratory labourers from the West began to move into the built-up areas and to settle down in them. Not alone did they settle themselves but they brought their wives and their families, their mothers-in-law and their fathers-in-law. Not alone did they find work for themselves but they found work for their wives.

The question is whether one will ask the small holder to survive on his few acres and the pattern of farming on the West of Ireland or whether you will say to him: "Do not cross that 60 miles of water just because there is £15 per week waiting for you there." If we refrain from turning this Chamber into a political debating forum, we will be able to face the facts and appreciate the facts as to the causes for migration from the western areas.

The present Minister introduced a scheme to extend dairying to the western areas. The real hope for these people lies in a pattern of dairy farming. They are to a large extent cattle raisers. They buy calves in the South and very often they discover that they get little more for them as yearlings than they paid for them as calves. Their income is precarious. Their method of farming is hazardous. If one wants to find the cause for the problem which exists in the West, one has to go back to Horace Plunkett and his efforts to establish a co-operative movement there. He was threatened at one meeting by the coopers and firkin makers. They had a vested interest in keeping the home butter-making industry going in the West. One spokesman for them declared at one of his creamery organising meetings in the West: "If butter is to be made in this county it will only be made on sound national and Christian principles."

I know that the Minister has done something which, if adopted by the people of the West of Ireland, would change their entire pattern. Everybody knows that dairying is a small farm economy because with it goes calves reared on skim milk, pig raising and poultry raising. I commend the Minister for his courage because if we continue with our present pattern of milk raising, it is bound to create a problem. I hope, in a few minutes, to give some idea of what that pattern is like.

People in the West of Ireland are trying to do the same thing on 10 or 15 acres of land as the people of Meath are doing on 200 acres. Their form of agriculture is extensive rather than intensive. They cannot ranch on 15 acres. If our people are to survive on small holdings and if our small holdings are to survive, there must be some intensive pattern of crop and animal husbandry. For that reason, we all welcome the scheme now being initiated in Mallow and let us hope that the small holders will see in that pattern something which may save them. The one thing that I believe will be their salvation is the adoption of an intensive method of crop and animal husbandry rather than an extensive method.

Did the Deputy ever hear of closing the stable door after the horse has gone?

You can deal with the missing horse. Let us take the case of Great Britain, where there are subsidies and subventions to the tune of about £300 million a year. An experiment is being carried out there on a number of small farms of 30, 40 and 50 acres. It is an experiment in varying types of crop and animal husbandry and two years ago, when an interim report was to be published, I discussed the problem with the scientist in charge of the experiment. What he said applies to Ireland and will apply to this country much more as we become more highly industrialised. He said that these small holders cannot, in man hours, get anything like the return they would get if they were in industrial employment. It is all a question of return per hour for the labour worked.

Let us not get away from the fact that, while statistics show that a number of people have left the land in recent years, the whole pattern on the farm has changed considerably over the past 30 or 40 years. I know that it was the pattern up to 25 or 30 years ago for farmers' sons and daughters to remain on the land and make what they called a fortune. They then took that dowry and married somebody locally. That pattern has changed; our educational system has changed that pattern. We do not find the housefuls of elderly spinsters and bachelors we found 30 or 40 years ago. The farmers' daughters are now working as stenographers in the city; they are nursing in the hospitals; and are even air hostesses. Good luck to them. If that is the pattern, must not everybody admit what the factual situation is: that that is one of the reasons they are leaving the land? All who remain behind now, even on large farms, are one son and one daughter, when 20 or 25 years ago the pattern was entirely different.

Why should we get up here, for some petty political purpose, and try to distort the picture and present it in the way it was presented by Deputy Blowick? This House is supposed to be a deliberative assembly in which we all present the views of the people we represent. Why, then, do we have speeches like that just made by Deputy Blowick? Would it not be much better for us to face the changing situation and admit to ourselves that while there may be some things we could do to alleviate hardship, as far as the general pattern is concerned, there is very little this Government or a Government composed of any Parties of this House can do?

I want to say now, and I have said it repeatedly before, that our people are a politically mature and intelligent people and that that kind of stuff will cut no ice with them. I invite any Deputy who has stood at a fair day meeting and made a speech to look at the same place ten minutes afterwards. He will see that they are standing around there analysing everything that one has said. If you try to deceive them, they will slaughter you, not with bullets but with the lead pencil.

I think we have a problem in relation to dairying and I do not care whether we are in or out of the Common Market. The very same competitors we have met in Great Britain in the sale of our agricultural produce are those whom we will meet in the Common Market. There is no escape for us. It must be admitted that in the final analysis we have to be as competitive as the other fellow, if we are to survive as an agricultural community. Let nobody think that there will be any special niche for an Irish exporter in Great Britain or in the Common Market. In marketing any surplus we have, we will have to be competitive in quality, price and presentation.

Let us examine the position in regard to the dairying industry. In analysing the problem, I could never make up my mind whether to describe the cattle industry as a subsidiary of dairying or dairying as a subsidiary of the cattle industry. From an analysis of the figures, it will readily be seen that there is a very serious problem confronting us, regardless of what market we send our dairy produce to. As a Deputy from a country which is primarily a dairying area, I can claim that in milk production, dairy products and the cattle industry, the dairying area is responsible for about 50 per cent. of the total value of our agricultural output. That fact should not be ignored. It must be realised that that represents only a very small portion of the country, one province, one might say. I am not concerned with that. I am concerned with the pattern of our dairying industry and I propose here to show the House, by reference to figures, the problem we will have to face in either the British market or the Common Market.

Milk production varies up and down. An average figure would be about 600,000,000 gallons per year. In order to bring home to our people the problem we have to face, I shall give comparative figures published in 1958. I am sure that the more recent figures, when they are available, will bear the same ratios.

We produce here per cow 442 gallons of milk at an income of £36; the Danes produce 709 gallons, at an income of £67; the Dutch produce 828 gallons at an income of £89. These figures should make us sit up and think and should bring forcibly home to us what our position will be in either the British market or the Common Market, if we are to export dairy produce extensively.

The cow population of Holland per 100 acres is 27; in Denmark, it is 18.5; in Ireland, it is 11. Holland is somewhat larger than the province of Munster. That must be borne in mind in reference to their cow population of 27 per 100 acres, together with the fact that their exports of horticultural produce amount to about £70,000,000 a year and their exports of bulbs amount to £20,000,000. That brings their income from these sources to a figure twice the value of our cattle exports.

I want to deal with the pattern of dairying in this country. About 100,000 farmers produce milk for creameries and about 10,000 farmers produce milk for liquid consumption and other purposes. The dairying industry, with its various processing and manufacturing units, employs about 4,500 people.

It is admitted that the pattern has been that industrial populations will not pay an economic price for the food they eat. On examination of the position in Great Britain, one sees the pattern that emerges there. Great Britain is our main market for exports of agricultural produce. The British farmers get approximately £300,000,000 — it used to be £20,000,000 more — in grants and subventions. It can be argued that that enormous subvention is paid by the industrial population. Let us examine the return from it. The English farmer is kept from howling by guaranteed prices. By any standard, he is well off and wealthy. The subventions are carried by the industrial population, which is very high in relation to the rural or agricultural population. For that £300,000,000, the industrial worker is recouped by a figure far in excess of that figure because the remainder of the market is thrown open to agricultural producers, to sell at the cheapest price. Anybody who has lived there will know that the British can buy their food cheaper than the populations in purely agricultural countries can because there is cut-price competition between all exporters in an effort to capture the market.

I do not want to refer to a particular instance but we know that in many instances they buy their food at prices less than the cost of production. As far as they are concerned, it is the old maxim of buying the cheapest and selling the dearest. That maxim still applies. Let us accept, as I said at the outset, that our output of milk is about 600,000,000 gallons a year. It is mainly grass-produced milk. I tried to break down the figures to show how that figure of 600,000,000 gallons is made up. Of that amount, 110,000,000 gallons are consumed in liquid form; 80,000,000 gallons are fed to calves and other livestock; 300,000,000 gallons are used for manufacture; and 120,000,000 gallons are made into farmers' butter. The last is a questionable figure. The total value would be something between £40,000,000 and £45,000,000. Of the 300,000,000 gallons sent to creameries, 85 per cent., or 250,000,000 gallons, are converted into butter; 6,000,000 gallons into cheese; 20,000,000 gallons into crumb; 5,000,000 gallons into milk powder; 1,000,000 gallons into condensed milk; and 3,000,000 gallons into ice cream and milk powder.

It is the 300,000,000 gallons taken by our creameries for manufacturing purposes that create a problem for us. Butter is the most depressed product into which you can manufacture milk. It is also a milk product which is most difficult to sell. If the Minister is to encourage an extension of dairying in the non-dairying areas, he must surely realise that, if the present pattern continues, we are going to have an insoluble problem. Some scheme must be devised to encourage our creameries to convert milk into products other than butter, products that have a readier and easier market. Otherwise, we will continue to be in trouble. That is the problem facing the Board set up by an Act of this House recently. It is a very substantial and urgent problem for them.

Britain has a cheese import of 125,000 tons annually. Our total cheese production is about 3,000 tons, all of which is consumed here, our exports being negligible. If we are to alter that pattern, we must devise some scheme and hold out some inducement to these butter creameries to convert their milk into some product other than butter. Butter has been described in the trade as the "sink product" by comparison with the other products into which you can manufacture milk.

Let us now return to store cattle. I think of store cattle as a subsidiary of the dairy industry. Let us examine the position. It is very easy to come in here and say farmers' incomes have dropped. We have been given a global figure of £16,000,000. In that figure is contained a drop in cattle prices which no Minister for Agriculture and no Government can control. You have the ebb and flow and all the vagaries of the store cattle trade in Great Britain. Let us examine the pattern of what is happening in Great Britain. In 1957, they reared 120,000 calves more than in the previous year. In 1958, they increased that figure by a further 190,000 calves. The result, with induced twinning and new techniques in breeding methods, is to narrow the store cattle market and to increase their own beef production. It would be wise, therefore, for our people not to put all their eggs in one basket. It is extremely wise of the Minister to try to further his scheme in the non-dairying areas and to persuade these people that they would have a more stable pattern of agriculture in dairying and calf raising rather than in the type of agriculture they now pursue.

In the beef market, whether in Great Britain or elsewhere, we still have the problem of competition, price and quality. We have the major problem here — the Minister dealt with it in detail and I shall refer to it only in passing — of bovine tuberculosis. It is a most urgent problem, but we have another. If this new systemic insecticide is the cure-all we hear it is, if the Minister is satisfied it can eradicate the warble fly, I would urge him to introduce a scheme of compulsory eradication. This is a factor which will militate against us in any market to which we export our cattle in future.

In previous contributions here, I dealt in detail with the various breeds and crosses in relation to beef production, conversion ratios and so on. It is imperative for us to make sure we have our A.I. stations and that we are responsible for breeding in the greater part of our cattle areas through progeny and performance testing not alone of dairy bulls but beef bulls as well. Let us face the challenge in time.

I turn now to sheep. I saw an announcement in the paper a few days ago that the Minister was introducing a fencing scheme. It is a commendable project. It is something we should have done a long time ago. If we are to think in terms of utilising our hill land, let us examine what the New Zealanders have done. In the past 20 years, they have converted their hills from barren places into areas where they can maintain all their breeding sheep. A pre-requisite for any scientific examination of the problem is fencing off. I fully appreciate the problem facing the Minister and the Department in regard to common grazing rights, but the farmers, in their own interest, must wake up to the fact that these hills must be fenced as a pre-requisite to improving their sheep.

I referred to New Zealand and I have some figures here which I want to quote. The annual imports of lamb to Britain amount to 280,000 tons. New Zealand has a near monopoly of that market for chilled lamb. Our contribution to that market is less than 10,000 tons. I want to emphasise one point, that as far as New Zealanders are concerned their exports are entirely of chilled lamb while we are in a position to supply fresh lamb to the British market. We are 100 miles away, if we take the points as between the ports of export and entry, and they are something like 14,000 miles away. Yet they have a near monopoly of the British market for chilled lamb. I sincerely hope that this scheme which the Minister is introducing will be a pre-requisite to our people realising that there is plenty of money in the hills of Ireland if they are treated properly, if they are treated the same way as the New Zealanders have treated theirs.

I referred to New Zealand and I have some figures here which I want to quote. The annual imports of lamb to Britain amount to 280,000 tons. New Zealand has a near monopoly of that market for chilled lamb. Our contribution to that market is less than 10,000 tons. I want to emphasise one point, that as far as New Zealanders are concerned their exports are entirely of chilled lamb while we are in a position to supply fresh lamb to the British market. We are 100 miles away, if we take the points as between the ports of exports and entry, and they are something like 14,000 miles away. Yet they have a near monopoly of the British market for chilled lamb. I sincerely hope that this scheme which the Minister is introducing will be a pre-requisite to our people realising that there is plenty of money in the hills of Ireland if they are treated properely, if they are treated the same way as the New Zealanders have treated theirs.

I want to compliment the Minister for introducing the piggery scheme. It is an admirable scheme and if we are to do anything substantially to increase our pigs and our bacon we will have to look to housing. I shall show in a few minutes the importance of housing when it comes to the fattening of pigs. A 200 lbs. live-weight pig can be produced for a meal equivalent of 6¾ cwts. A figure which I was given as the housing estimate for a pig put it at about £10 per pig. In pig houses, heating is an important factor. You cannot produce pigs economically in cold, drafty houses. A survey made not so long ago shows that in the area in which the survey was made the night temperature of most pig houses dropped below 40 degrees Farenheit. If you are trying to produce pigs and the night temperatures drop below 40 degrees Farenheit, the pigs will require a considerable amount of meals to fatten them, meals which they would not require if they were in a house which was properly insulated. A cold, drafty house can mean an extra 2 cwts. of meal to bring a pig to a weight of 200 lbs. and that would roughly cost £3. If we are to take the unit cost per pig at about £10 per house, the interest and repayment of the cost of a good fattening house would work out at something like six shillings per pig fattened.

In our pig housing scheme, the Department and the Minister should make sure that the right type of house is erected and that the right type of insulation is introduced to maintain temperatures at which pigs will thrive and fatten with the minimum amount of meal consumed. A paper published by Rassmussen on the efficiency of pig production, as far as the Danes were concerned, stated that the Danish factories can pay 26/- per pig more than the value of the resultant bacon. This is about 26/- more than the Irish factories pay. He gave as the reason the more efficient disposal of pig by-products by the Danish factories. If that is a factual figure, and if there is that divergence of 26/- per pig, then as far as our bacon factories and our bacon industry are concerned, there is need for investigation. Some investigation should be made into this figure.

I do not agree with Deputy Manley that pig production and bacon production should be the exclusive right of our small farmers. I believe the time has come when efficient bacon production should be attached to the co-operative creameries. I think a pig breeding scheme based on and operated by the co-operative creameries would be worth-while. They could bring in first-class boars. They could put up the fattening houses. They could keep progeny records and they could do a lot of work that the individual cannot do. A scheme of that kind would be worth considering. The shareholders could have their pigs sent to the fattening houses and their boars tested. Much can be done, if we are to increase our exports of pigs substantially, by getting adjoining co-operative creameries into a scheme like that. I can see no reason why co-operative creameries could not further it and go into the co-operative production of bacon and pig meat. A number of our bacon factories are too small and much of their equipment and plant is obsolete. If a proper scheme is introduced and if these people were compensated I think they would be glad to get out.

I dealt with the British cheese market. If we were to turn a substantial amount of our milk into cheese we would have a considerable amount of whey. In a town in the area from which I come, there is a factory where whey is used. Although my association with it has not been great recently, I know from figures I got at a time when I was nearer to it and much more interested, that whey has a meal equivalent of about ¾ lb. per gallon. To dispose of whey by any other means is very difficult and the most economic way is by pig fattening units attached to cheese manufacturing creameries.

Many Deputies from agricultural areas may not know that for some time the Danes have introduced a system of stalling sows. We all think of sows as being animals which cannot be stalled. Very few people in this country think of them as animals which could be successfully put into stalls and confined, so that no longer can they be looked upon as old ladies on the rampage in our neighbours' farmyards or marauders in beet fields. Now the Danes have introduced a scheme in which sows are stalled between barred or otherwise divided partitions 27 inches apart. In front there is a bar and a feeding through and at the back there is a single bar which prevents the sow from backing out of the stall.

Contrary to what most people think, there is no hazard attached to the hind legs of the sow — she cannot kick back. A three-quarter inch bar at the back will keep her in absolute control. A sow that has been in such a stall for four or five litters has remained quite active and it has been proved that the bonhams are more healthy than those allowed on the rampage in neighbours' potato clamps or beet fields. That should be tried out here for what it is worth.

Before concluding I want to say something about the Sugar Company. If there is any undertaking in the country capable of helping the small man, it is the Sugar Company. Deputy Crotty referred to the excess number of horticultural instructors by comparison with agricultural instructors. I disagree. I think the reverse is the case. We have not enough agricultural scientists in the country. Who are responsible for that? Who but the elected representatives on the county committees of agriculture — the people who have complete control over the number of agricultural instructors in their respective counties? They can create additional posts. In Cork we increased the number of agricultural instructors from 14 to 22.

In order to be successful we must make the necessary scientific knowledge available to the farmers, particularly if they are to go into the horticultural business — a business which would be new to many of our small-holders. From the point of view of income I sincerely hope this will be done. If that change were to come about here, it would certainly be a new pattern of farming for our small men. When one realises the effect of the figures I have given in relation to Dutch exports of horticultural produce, one will realise the enormous potential of this type of farming. Whether it be in bacon, in milk or in horticultural production, we must realise we are competing against a world well primed by scientific research, organisation, and marketing tactics, and unless we adopt this pattern I am afraid we will not be competitive either in British or in European markets.

When the present Government took office four-and-a-half years ago I sincerely hoped that Deputy Moher would be appointed Minister for Agriculture. I then regarded Deputy Moher as highly intelligent, a man of integrity who knew quite a lot about agriculture. However, after listening to his speech today I am very pleased that he was not. I think it is a very good job for the farmers of this country that he was left where he was.

No hurry.

Bad and all as the present Minister for Agriculture is, Deputy Moher would have been five times worse. The only solution he could offer for the small, congested land-holders in the West of Ireland is similar to that which Hitler had for the Jews — to drive them out, to exterminate them. He then added insult to injury by saying these small farmers did not want to remain on their holdings. He claimed they were going to England for a higher standard of living and that they would not stay at home unless they were able to buy Rolls Royces and other such luxuries.

That is completely untrue. They are only too anxious to remain on their holdings and live there. They do not want a high standard of living. All they want is to earn an ordinary labourer's wages on their own land and it should be within the bounds of possibility to ensure that that would be provided. In the West of Ireland smallholders, capable of earning £5 or £6 a week from their land, are prepared to stay at home.

If we are to measure the activities of the Department of Agriculture by the Minister's speech, there is very little hope for the small farmers in the West of the country. It is quite apparent to all that very little has been done for them over the past four years but I thought the Minister would by now have appreciated that fact, that he would have realised their plight and have brought in some proposals for their relief. As far as I can see, all the Minister was able to say was what every farmer knows — that the prices of livestock have been fluctuating violently over the past number of years. When the prices of livestock fluctuate, it is always to the disadvantage of the small farmers because the bigger farmers can hold over till prices right themselves again. They have the fodder and the money to buy it. They can afford to wait.

The Minister then came along with the childish statement that there was some mysterious thing operating as regards cattle prices. If there is, is it not the duty of the Minister for Agriculture to go and see his opposite number in Britain, find out what this mysterious thing is and try and hit it on the head? The Minister has no business telling me that cannot be done. It was done by Deputy Dillon in 1948 when, as Minister for Agriculture, he went to Britain and hammered out a cattle agreement which gave stability to the cattle trade as long as the pact lasted. I do not see why the Minister has not been able to do the same thing. He does not appear in the least alarmed by the fact that the farmers' share in the national income is gradually falling. That does not upset him.

When the present Government took office and abolished the food subsidies, it immediately meant demands for increased wages and salaries to certain sections of the community. I have no blame whatever for their doing that. That is something they should have done but they did nothing whatever to relieve the plight of the farmers. Instead of trying to cushion them against those increases in the cost of living, the first thing the present Minister did after he became Minister was to abolish the section of the land reclamation scheme that was being mostly used by the small farmer. He created the position which exists at the present time where only the farmer who is wealthy and has ready cash can avail himself of the scheme at all.

We cautioned him at the time of the damage that would follow and the repercussions that would come from it but apparently it fell on deaf ears. After all, the Minister, I understand, is himself a farmer and we thought that he should have seen what the lack of lime had done to this country over the years. When Deputy Dillon brought in the ground limestone scheme and made it available to farmers at a price they could afford, it was used extensively throughout the country. Anybody, even a person who is not a farmer, who went through the country saw the change that was made — a change in the crops, the grass and other things. What did the present Minister do immediately upon taking office? He cut the subsidy on ground lime. Again, we cautioned him as to what would happen. We told him that not only would it endanger the farmers but that it would endanger the whole national income and the output of livestock. If the Minister got back, the subsidy would certainly go but we need not worry on that point because there is not very much hope of the Minister being Minister in the very near future.

Do not depress me.

I do not think it will happen.

Do not be so depressing.

The big farmer may be able to eke out an existence under the present set up because he does not have certain gains but it is no exaggeration to say that the small farmers of the West are driven completely to the wall. They are closing up, locking their doors and going to England not, as Deputy Moher says, because they want to go but because they have to go. Surely the Minister knows where all this is leading to. The Minister should know that the vast majority of the land in this country is held by small farmers. He should also know that the production on small farms is much higher than that on the larger farms. When these people go, production on those holdings will fall. If that state of affairs is allowed to continue, it will not be very many years until the wage earners and salary earners, who have got all the increases to cushion them against the rising cost of living, will wake up and realise for the first time the importance of the small farmers in our whole economy. Any Taoiseach or any Government that would allow that to happen would be very foolish indeed.

As other speakers have mentioned, the pig plays a very important part in the economy of the small farmer. We had hoped that the Minister would do something to settle, so to speak, the chaotic state of affairs that exists in the pig trade over a number of years but as far as I can see the Minister has made no move whatever. He has just allowed the bacon factories to do what they like. It is the bacon factories that make policy as far as the bacon industry in this country is concerned and not the Department of Agriculture. It is high time something were done about that.

There appeared some time ago a statement supposed to have been made by the representative of one of the biggest bacon factories in England. This individual was supposed to have advised his producers not to bother their heads about the grading of pigs but to produce whatever type of pig was suitable; that his factory had the machinery to deal with the pig, process it, take off the fat and use it for the purpose for which it was best suited. I do not know what the facts of that are but I think it was a serious enough statement for the Minister to have given some attention to it. I hope he will tell us something about it when he is replying.

One of the greatest factors in making pig-rearing a success, especially on the small farms, is the provision of suitable foodstuff at as low a price as possible. I am quite sure that the pig producers were amazed — I know I was amazed — to hear the Minister state that An Bord Gráin, or whatever it is called, had sold 100,000 tons of wheat at £16 to £18 a ton and imported pollard at £20 a ton. If that was not a most ridiculous transaction, I do not know what is.

They did not import pollard.

Who imported it?

The Deputy should get his facts right.

Who imported it?

The Deputy is making the statement.

And he will make another statement now. There were 100,000 tons of wheat exported at £16 to £18 a ton and there was a large quantity of pollard imported at £20 a ton. The Minister, explaining that situation, made another childish remark. He said there was a difference between wheat and pollard. Surely there is a difference between wheat and pollard. Wheat is a much better feed than pollard. We export a good feed at a bad price and we import inferior pig feeding stuff at a good price. I think that should not be allowed to continue. If it is, we can forget about the pig trade.

I do not intend to say very much about the bovine tuberculosis scheme. The Minister knows quite well that whatever help is available from this side of the House in helping to speed up the eradication of bovine T.B. he will get it. We all realise the importance of that scheme. Some of the farmers are getting a bit tired of it and they are very anxious to know whether the end is in view. I hope the Minister will give us a few more details when he is replying. It would be a great relief to the farmers to know that the end was, at least, in view.

There is another point I should like to mention and that is in relation to the turkey trade. The turkey trade is a very important part of the economy of the small farmers of the West. I think now is the time to make whatever arrangements that can be made. This trade appears to have undergone very drastic changes in the past couple of years. There appears at the moment to be a market for prepared birds — deep freeze birds. In my opinion and in the opinion of a lot of people the freshly killed bird is of much better quality and flavour. However, the customer is always right. If the customer has changed his views I hope we shall not fall behind in meeting the new trend.

There is a large number of lambs in the country. The price has taken a drastic tumble in recent weeks. It has fallen from about 2/6d. per lb. to 1/10d. or 1/11d. per lb. That would represent a loss of approximately 30/-on a reasonably good lamb. That is a very serious fall. The farmers are expecting some direction from the Minister as to what is likely to happen in that respect. They would like to know whether it would be better for them to accept the bad price which is now offering or to wait until the autumn in the hope of a better price.

Deputy Moher mentioned the large quantities of New Zealand lamb coming on the British market and the very small quantity of freshly-killed Irish lamb which reaches that market. It should not be beyond the power of the Minister to hammer out a better arrangement with our nearest neighbour whereby they would take a greater proportion of our lamb. Over the years, the lamb trade appears to have undergone very remarkable changes. We appeared to have a reasonably good market for that product in France a few years ago and then, just when things were going well, the market collapsed, for what reason we were not told.

The Common Market is in everybody's mind just now. Very few of us know anything about it. We were expecting some direction or some information from the Minister about it. I was amazed to hear the Minister make the bald statement that if Britain joins the Common Market we shall do likewise, and there is no more about it.

I did not say that.

I understood the Minister to say it.

No. The Deputy had better read my speech again. Did he read it?

I did not. I listened to the Minister. I understood him to say that we shall do whatever Britain does in that respect.

The Deputy understood me quite incorrectly in that event.

I accept that. If the Minister says he did not say it, that is fair enough.

I am not saying it would not be true if I had happened to say it but I did not say it.

The Taoiseach said it.

The Taoiseach is not here at the moment. I am referring to what the Minister said. If the Minister had made it his business to examine this matter in the course of the past four years the country and this House would be very grateful to him now. We should all like to know what repercussions would result from our joining or not joining the Common Market. However, better late than never. The Minister should allay the fears and suspicions of our people by telling us now what he knows about what repercussions will eventuate for our farming community as a result of our joining or not joining the Common Market. The attitude of the Government may be correct, namely, that we must do what John Bull does. A large section of the community believe it is not incumbent upon us to do what John Bull does. They are inclined to think we are a free agent in this matter and they might be right.

I come now to the position of our farmers in the past three or four years, since this Government took office. As I mentioned, every section of the community was compensated for the increased cost of living except the farmers. Their income was reduced and some of that reduction was brought about by deliberate action not alone of the Government but of the Minister. If that happened to any other section of the community with any type of organisation they would not tolerate it and the Minister would soon be brought to his senses. There would be strikes, and so on. However, just because the farmers have no organisation, anything they get is considered good enough for them. That sort of treatment can reach a stage at which the farmers will no longer be willing to take it.

Look at all the farmers' organisations that met in the West last Sunday to look after the interests of the farmers, those buying up land, and so on. Yet the Deputy says the farmers are not organised.

Did the Minister or the Government pay much heed to them? That meeting was held in order to bring the Government to their senses and to try to prevent the sale of Irish land to foreigners——

It was held to start a political racket for the weak-kneed Deputies in the West.

As many as 8,000 acres were sold in the Midlands recently while our congests have not breathing space in the West. When we ask for some land in order that some of those congests may migrate we are told the land is not there for them. Yet, it is there for everybody else.

It does not arise relevantly on this Vote.

The Minister started it.

The Deputy was complaining the farmers are not organised. They had a meeting last Sunday.

Deputy J. Burke will now come to the Vote.

The French farmers were not organised. When things went too far, they brought the French Government to their senses. That will happen here too. The French Government then started to bring the income of the French farmers into line with that of the other sectors of the community. In the heel of the hunt, that will happen here also.

I understand and am very pleased to hear that General Costello of the Sugar Company found pretty good markets for dried fruit and vegetables and that there is every chance of the development of a large market for that produce. I should like to congratulate General Costello on his endeavours. I wish there were more men in the agricultural sphere as energetic as he is. It might well be brought to his notice, when these processing stations are being formed and contracts are being given out, that the ideal place would be the West of Ireland because the small farmer there is ideally situated to cope with that type of agriculture. I trust the Minister will do what he can in that respect.

The fall in output of the small farmer is to the detriment of the nation as a whole. The national economy is suffering grievously from that fact. At a rough estimate I should say that 50 per cent. Of the smaller and medium-sized farms — certainly in the West — are suffering from lack of capital. It is up to the Government to make credit available to our farmers at a rate of interest which they can afford to pay. I think it was the Minister for Finance who said that anyone can get all the money he wants from the banks, that they are paying money out. I do not see them paying it out. They may be paying it to the 500 acre man in Meath, but they are not paying it to the 20 acre man in the West of Ireland, and neither are the Agricultural Credit Corporation. Someone said here last year that the only way a 20 acre man can get money from the banks or the Agricultural Credit Corporation is to prove to their entire satisfaction that he does not need it. He will get it then.

To prove that point, a small farm costings survey was made in the West of Ireland some time ago by a well-known economist. That man carried out his work so carefully and methodically that he was awarded a doctorate. What did he find? He found that the average income of the small farmer — and I think what he classed as a small farmer was a man with around 20 acres — was less than half a labourer's income. Is it any wonder those people close their doors and leave the country? That man was in a position to make a fair estimate of the situation and he found that the small farmers were earning less than half what labourers were earning. The reasons he gave for that deplorable state of affairs were lack of capital and lack of adequate technical knowledge.

So far as I can see, there is very little hope for the small farmer in the West, unless credit is made more readily available to him on a long term basis, and unless an adequate advisory service, such as the reintroduction of the parish plan, is provided for him. We must always remember that there is no use in providing technical advice unless the small farmer is put in the position of having money to avail of that advice. I think he is entitled to it. He is not begging anyone for anything. He is just asking for what he is entitled to. He has good security. The best security in this country is his bit of land and he is entitled to get a reasonable loan on it. Any businessman who has become a success in this or in any other country was educated and trained along a certain line, and capital was then made available to him. He did not have capital in his own right and had to borrow it. There is no sounder man to whom to lend money than the farmer, because his land is the best security.

We should remember it was that policy that made Denmark one of the most prosperous countries in the world. We Irish are inclined to shy away from borrowing a few pounds. The position in Denmark is that at the moment the average farmer borrows, and gets freely, more than 60 per cent. not only of the value of his holding but of his holding, stock and equipment. There is no hesitation in giving it because it is known that there is adequate technical advice and that it will be used for the proper purpose.

Some time ago, I asked the Minister a question regarding the potato regulations. Some of the small farmers in the Athlone potato growing area were hit fairly hard by the regulation preventing them from growing more than one potato crop in the same ground. The Minister's answer was that the regulation had to be enforced because of the danger of the spread of potato diseases. I can quite appreciate the Minister's point. Every precaution must be taken, but the facts are — I know them now and I did not know them then — that this land has been certified as completely free from all types of potato disease. Most of these small holdings are bog land and to get them into fertility and enable grain to be grown on them, you must grow two or three root crops. The only root crop that can be grown there with any hope of turning it into cash is potatoes. In view of the fact that that area has been certified as free from that disease, I would ask the Minister and his Department to reconsider that position.

There is another point I should like to mention, but whether it comes within the Minister's sphere I do not know. A great many of these small farmers whose incomes are only £3 or £4 a week are also hit because of the fact that they are not eligible for any of the health services which are made available to people who are earning much more money in other spheres of life. If a small farmer has over a certain valuation, he will not get a medical card, irrespective of his income. I mention that in passing only, to show one of the hardships inflicted on him.

In view of the fact that the Minister for Local Government is at the moment sponsoring a water supply scheme that will cost the farmers something in the neighbourhood of £30,000,000 — and on top of that, they will be compelled to pay water rates — I thought the Minister would have dwelt on the fact that a water supply scheme designed for farmers has already been put into operation by the Minister for Agriculture. I thought he would have told us whether that scheme was a success, how it was working out, or how it could be enlarged. I think it would be much sounder from the farmers' point of view to increase those grants, and let each one deal with his own water supply, instead of spending £30,000,000 putting pipes here, there and everywhere all over the country, and on top of that, forcing the farmers to pay a water rate.

The Minister should consider increasing those grants. He should have a chat with the Minister for Local Government and try to get him to reconsider what I believe is a fantastic scheme. If it is carried out, it will drive the rates to goodness knows what level. I firmly believe it will drive them up by 6/- or 8/- in the £.

Will the Deputy as a county councillor not have a say in that?

I will not. Unfortunately, Fianna Fáil are able to command a majority now in my county.

That is a very desirable development.

If I had, it would not happen.

That shows the dangerous position Deputy Burke's county is in.

There must be that danger in nearly every county now.

There is not. If the Minister looks at the elections of chairmen of county councils, he will see——

Waterford, for example?

A Deputy on the other side of the House — Deputy Faulkner, I think — mentioned the importance of a livestock advisory service. If that happy development can be brought about, I shall be in full agreement with him, because while it is very important that the farmers should get technical advice in regard to grass land, manures and various other things, there does not appear to be any inspector to advise them in regard to livestock. Livestock are just as important in the economy of the farmers as grass or any other thing. If that service could be provided, it would be a very good thing.

The Deputy also mentioned that there is dire need for more horticultural inspectors. That is quite true. The county committee of agriculture in Roscommon advertised for a horticultural instructor at the minimum rate, as it usually does, and we could not get one. We then advertised at the maximum rate, but we still could not get one. That shows they are just not in the country. How they are going to be got to qualify I do not know. It should be made clear by the people in authority that there is an opening for horticultural instructors, that there is likely to be a market from the Sugar Company for fruit and vegetables. We expect that aspect of our economy to expand but it cannot expand without instructors.

I do not intend to say very much more for the simple reason that it is a waste of breath. Even if the Minister were here, he would not bother to listen. When the Government have been in office for four and a half years it is proper to have some check on their activities during that time. I do not know of any better way to check on the activities or the policy of the Government than to judge them by the results achieved during their term of office. Many times Fianna Fáil told the people, when they were charged with neglect of some kind, that they were not long in office, that they went out after two or three years and they could not do anything. They are in office now nearly five years and what have they achieved? Taxation has increased by about £20 million; about 200,000 of our young people have been forced to emigrate; and there are 50,000 fewer people in employment now than in 1957. Is that not a sad state of affairs after Fianna Fáil's four and a half years in office? The only hope I can see for this country is an immediate change and that change will certainly come.

I do not think what any Deputy has to say in this debate will have much influence on the Minister or the Government in the light of the circumstances that should obtain within the next two months. However, it is necessary to say a few words on this Estimate solely in view of the fact that the Minister in his opening statement made only a passing reference to the problems of the Common Market, if and when this country joined that group. I was amazed, having listened to the Minister and read his opening statement, that he should see fit to devote so little time to a matter of such major importance to the country and the farming community. I propose to make some comments in the course of this debate in the hope that I might persuade the Minister in his closing statement to deal more fully with the problems of the Common Market as he sees them. At this stage I would urge upon him and on his colleague who is present here to give the House and the country the facts in so far as they are available to the Government.

The Taoiseach and several Ministers came into this House within the past fortnight and explained the problem which this country was likely to meet in connection with its industrial development and expansion if we joined the Common Market. A great deal of the time of this House was taken up discussing the problem of our industrialists and the question of the unemployment that might arise as a result of the smaller industries going to the wall. When this most important arm of our industry, namely, agriculture was open for discussion, I thought we would have had an equally prolonged and detailed account of the problems of agriculture as were given to us by the Taoiseach and other Ministers in the industrial sphere. However, we have got no information whatever from the Minister. We had a long, rambling statement from him and a pathetic appeal to the House to help him by understanding his problem in regard to the difficulties that have overtaken the cattle trade. I do not think I am doing the Minister an injustice when I comment in that fashion on his speech.

Before I deal with some of the problems which I believe this country faces in connection with the Common Market, let me advert to some of the statements made here about the small farmer. If I said what I feel like saying about the way the small farmer has been treated over the years, you, Sir, would rule me out of order for using unparliamentary language. I shall put it this way: I think the small farmer has been a political football over the past 40 years. He is bewildered, bothered and bewitched by the various Parties in this House, each of them claiming to be the one Party which has the small farmers' interests at heart. They have all got their chance in this House at one stage or another to put into operation their policies, if they had any, and to bring about the fundamental change in the agricultural pattern that would give stability and a reasonable livelihood to the small farming community. Over the past 30 years we have seen no change for the better for the small farmer. In spite of the progress that has been made in regard to machinery and other developments, the problem of the small farmer has become more serious and the number of small farmers is declining.

I listened to Deputy Moher here to-day. He is a walking encyclopaedia in regard to agriculture. I say that seriously because I think he is an expert on various matters in connection with agriculture, but it is very depressing to think that all that Deputy Moher could tell us about the small farmer and his problem was that this was a problem that was facing several States in America, that was facing places like Canada and parts of Europe and that because this trend away from the land had taken place in these other countries it was inevitable that a similar trend should be evident in Ireland. I am not interested in the plains of America, Canada or elsewhere but I am interested in some of the European countries especially Denmark, Holland and other such countries where it is suggested that there is a drift away from the land. Of course there is, because the density of population in these small European countries per acre is something like ten times what it is in Ireland.

There must be an outlet for the surplus population on the small holdings in these European countries and the surplus population, in the form of young men and women, move into the industries that are to a great extent based on agriculture. It is beyond dispute that in Ireland we are under-populated on the richest lands of the country. Therefore we must not take it that, because the trend in other countries is away from the land, we must accept that policy here in Ireland. We must not accept any such thing. We must accept, if you like, a trend away from the congested holdings because no hope is being held out by any Government of a reasonable living for the people who live on them. No real attempt has been made to carve up in other areas the large tracts of land available for years in order to create economic units and introduce a system of co-operation between groups to enable small farmers to have a guaranteed market, get the best price for their produce, and cut out this "dog eat dog" attitude which has prevailed in agriculture over the years.

Deputy Moher stated, and rightly so, that it was nonsensical to suggest that the pattern of farming which obtains in the midlands is suitable for the West of Ireland. It is a crazy system to have a 15 to 25 acre farmer in the west dependent for his livelihood on store cattle. In saying that, I know that in my own constituency people will now go around, as they always do, and suggest that I want to get rid of the small farmers' income as far as cattle are concerned. Store cattle are a crazy economic system of agriculture for the small farmer. The small farmer should be encouraged to go in for intensive cultivation. The problem has existed for 40 years and, as I said to Deputy Moher earlier, it is a bit late now to say we must change it — now when the people are pouring out of the country because they have lost hope of any fundamental change ever being brought about.

The biggest danger that faces any Government is a lack of confidence in this House on the part of the rural population. People have lost hope that any thing concrete will be done to solve this problem. Consider the position of the pig industry. Time and again the farmers have been told to get into the pig industry and produce more pigs because there will be a market. What has the position been? The greater the output the lower the price fell and the more unsettled the market became.

There is no competition between buyers from the different factories. I have had that experience myself in Ballygar, Roscommon and elsewhere. I have known two buyers from two different factories to arrive at the same fair and one said to the other: "You had better push on to Roscommon or Tullamore. I will take this fair today." There is no competition. The small farmer must sell his pigs at whatever price he is offered. I agree a certain amount of stability was introduced by the guaranteed price system. I also maintain that that system has not been sufficient.

The real test of a Government's interest in the small farmers is their action against those who exploit them. The bacon factories have exploited the small farmer down through the years without any interference from any Government over the last 20 years. They are the people who have got free reign in the bacon industry. We know the condition of our trade abroad where bacon is concerned. The real test of a Government's sincerity is if they are prepared to take action. Talk is no good unless it is translated into action. If the necessary action is taken there will be some hope of restoring the confidence of the small farmer.

I want to deal now with malting barley. There should be a tremendous future for malting barley if the end product is sold. Here again, as in the bacon industry, we have a vested interest, a small group who will not brook interference. No steps have been taken by any Government so far to bring the people in the distilling industry to their senses. There is no reason why the output of malting barley should not be increased. That would be a tremendous asset to the small and medium size farmer. If the necessary steps were taken to expand the production of the end product the acerage could be increased tenfold. I am not concerned about the rights of private property when only a personal interest is involved. I am concerned when the national interest is involved. I hold that the State should step in and, if necessary, set up a State or semi-State body to ensure expansion in that particular field.

I have heard Deputies talk about the wonderful export trade of some of the small European countries. Do they think that trade was got simply by leaving production to the individual farmer and marketing to a group of pseudo experts? These countries are highly organised and integrated. State and semi-State control operates in relation to both production and marketing. The individual must toe the line and implement a common policy. Here all that is left to individual exporters. We know that in the past some of the exporters from this country have let the country down badly, and no action has been taken by the Government.

One Deputy raised the question of the export of lamb to France that obtained some two or three years ago. We know what happened. This trade had tremendous potentialities for the small farmer in particular. It collapsed overnight. Every effort was made to discover why. We were given a variety of reasons, but not the true reason. Certain exporters were exporting well matured small sheep as lamb. The substitution was discovered by the French authorities. They had no intention of allowing themselves to be exploited in that fashion by Irish exporters. I often read in our papers where a young boy is charged with stealing three shillings or four shillings out of a till or a young man with stealing food out of a shop. The sentence imposed for that crime on the community may be two months or three months.

What happens to the individual who exports inferior produce to a foreign country, harming the good name of this country and of all the small farmers who have to depend on the particular produce for their livelihood? As far as I can see no action is taken. His export licence may be taken away for 12 months or two years. At the end of that time he makes an appeal to his local Deputy; a sob story is put up and the licence is restored. If we find people exploiting a situation like that, there is only one way to deal with them. That is to bring them before the courts and give them a sentence in proportion to the gravity of the crime they have committed against the people. That is the only way we can put an end to that kind of dishonesty.

The Minister in Page 9 of his speech makes reference to the problem of the wheat harvest of 1960. I was very interested in his comments on this matter because this problem of wheat was discussed in the House not so long ago. The problem arose as to who should be the controlling influence in the growing and processing of wheat. So far as this Government are concerned, the control is being exercised by the Irish Flour Milling Association and, so far as the Department of Agriculture are concerned, they have little or no control over that body. The Minister stated that the area under wheat in 1960 showed a reduction of 30 per cent as compared with the previous year and he said that, while the yield was up to the average, only a relatively small proportion could be included in the flour milling grist. He said that he had arranged to have independent tests made to enable him to decide what could be included in the grist and that it was agreed that about 110,000 tons could be used for the grist and that about 240,000 tons were to be exposed for sale by An Bord Gráin either on the home market or abroad.

The Minister did undoubtedly make inquiries as to whether a greater proportion of home grain could be used in the grist. I questioned one of the so-called independent sources to which he went for information, the one in Britain which is well known to be closely associated with the British Flour Millers' Association who are, in turn, closely connected with the Irish Flour Millers. I have grave doubts as to whether you can get an independent view from such a source. I would prefer to rely on the recommendation made to the Minister by the Agricultural Institute.

I have their report to the Minister on the milling and baking qualities of Irish wheat as a result of the investigations which they carried out as to whether Irish wheat was suitable for use in the grist. I shall not delay the House with the details of the report but on page 2 the Chief Officer of the Scientific Committee of An Foras Tionscal said: "Taking all the factors into consideration we recommend an increase of the percentage of the 1960 crop of Irish wheat in our grist from 25 to 60." That is the recommendation made by the scientists of the Agricultural Institute. That Institute is a body for which we all have a great regard but there is very little use in having their services unless we are prepared to use them. They recommend a stepping up of the percentage from 25 to 60 but, in spite of that, we know that up to recently the flour millers were only using 25 per cent. That may have been increased to 30 per cent. within the last month but that is a long distance from the recommendation of the Agricultural Institute.

I would like the Minister to tell us if he is prepared to accept the recommendation of the Agricultural Institute or if he is going to accept dictation from the Irish Flour Millers' Association who have stated bluntly that they will only use 30 per cent. and that they do not feel they could use any more. There is great need for the Minister to step in and give a direction at this stage because otherwise I do not see much point in having our own scientific department set up to give us the best advice. There is not much use in getting advice from our Institute if we are to accept the advice obtained from an Institute in Britain which is closely associated with the British Flour Millers' Association.

If the Minister does not accept that recommendation he is showing nothing but disrespect for the body set up here. There again we have the case of a private group being in a position to exploit the community; we know that that is happening in many fields so far as agriculture is concerned. The Government will need to give very serious thought to the steps they take to stamp out these vested interests or the farming community will realise that the Government are not on their side but are only pretending to be on their side so as to get the best of both worlds.

I do not want to suggest that it suits a Government to have a big business on their side in relation to a political campaign. Groups of this kind will pay very handsomely into political coffers for favours granted in the past and hoped for in the future. I do not want to delay the House on this matter but it is well known that these groups subscribe generously to the political "kitties" of the Parties. If that state of affairs is allowed to continue, we can have no hope at all that the lot of the small farmer will be improved.

At this stage I would like to deal with another matter to which reference was made in the Minister's speech. That is the reference to the oats situation, on page 10. He stated:

The quality of the 1960 oats crop was affected by the weather and it was necessary to permit the import of limited quantities for race horses and oatmeal milling. A cry went up that there was enough good quality oats at home to meet these requirements but a house to house effort to locate suitable oats failed to reveal its existence except in very small quantities, which were taken up.

That is a very remarkable statement for a Minister for Agriculture to make — that there was a house to house effort to locate suitable oats. May I ask the Minister whether that house to house effort was made by the officers of his Department in Donegal and in Tipperary? My information is that no such effort whatever was made either by the Department or by the group to which he referred—the Bloodstock Breeders' and the Race-horse Owners' Association. It is beyond contradiction that there was plenty of good oats available in Donegal. We know for a fact that over the years the bloodstock breeders and the race-horse owners have had little regard for this country, that their main objective is to get oats at the cheapest possible price. When they were allowed to import oats, it meant that the small farmer who had oats as a cash crop was at their mercy and was forced to dispose of it at an uneconomic price.

Not alone was the importation of these oats a disservice to the small farmer but it was a slur on Ireland as an agricultural country that it was considered necessary that our racehorses should have foreign oats before it could be said that they were receiving a first-class diet. A country that prides itself on its agricultural industry and on the products of the land showed poor confidence in the farming community in suggesting that foreign oats were better than oats produced at home. It was a disgraceful action on the part of the Minister to allow the two groups to which I have referred to import oats to the extent of 6,000 tons.

I do not know how true it is but I am told that the people who got the import licences have too much imported oats on hand and that the Minister has directed or suggested that these oats be got rid of to the oatmeal millers. In this debate, the Minister has for the first time made reference to the fact that the oatmeal millers are interested in foreign oats.

When the question of importation of foreign oats was mentioned in this House, it was specifically stated that the two groups, namely, the Bloodstock Breeders' Association and the Racehorse Owners' Association, were the only two groups which were given an import licence to bring oats for feeding purposes. Yet, in the Minister's statement to this House, he said it was necessary to permit the import of limited quantities for racehorses and oatmeal milling.

I should like the Minister to say whether or not there is a surplus, a glut, if you like, of foreign oats on the hands of these groups and whether or not they have been told to get rid of it to the oatmeal millers. Is that a fact? I hope the Minister will comment on that matter. If he does not, I hope to extract the true situation from him next week in the form of an answer to a question but I would prefer him to deal with it in the course of his reply to this debate.

In my opening remarks, I said I was surprised that the Minister failed to make a comprehensive statement on the situation that is likely to arise if we join the Common Market on the heels of Great Britain or as a result of the fact that Britain is likely to enter. Of course, it is now decided that we have no real say one way or the other, that policy on all matters of importance is being decided in the British House of Commons and by the British Tory Government. Two days ago, Mr. Macmillan summoned his lackeys from the North to Chequers to discuss the problems of the Six Counties and he has his new pals over today from the Twenty-six Counties to tell them what the position will be both for Ireland and for Great Britain. It is an extraordinary situation that after 40 years a Fianna Fáil Government have allowed the country to be put in the position that such a thing could happen. However, it would appear that it has happened and that we have no say. Consequently, I propose just to put a query or two to the Minister on the basis that Britain is likely to join the Common Market.

It has been said by people in this House and outside it that Ireland would benefit in the agricultural sphere by becoming a member of the Common Market. I do not believe that. I do not think it is fair that comments to the effect that Ireland's position will be improved should be made in that way without the case being pursued properly. I do not in any circumstances suggest that I am an expert in interpreting the various Articles of the Treaty of Rome, but, even on a layman's reading, it is quite apparent that the most rigid protection will be given to the existing members of the European Economic Community insofar as agriculture is concerned and that all others who become members, whether full members or associate members, will be confined to their existing lines of agricultural production.

I do not want to repeat what I said on another occasion here, that the whole idea of the Common Market came about as a result of big business trying to become bigger. Highly industrialised countries such as Germany, Northern Italy and France, decided that it would be a good proposition if they could set up a third force in the industrial field to compete with both the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. by organising industry on big business lines in a European community. It is logical that the minds that thought out that industrial plan would also believe in the idea of big business in agriculture if they could succeed in putting it across.

If we join the Common Market, without drastic changes being made in the terms of the Articles of the Treaty of Rome, we will be forced to agree to a policy of further depopulation of the land of Ireland. If we go in with our eyes open on that basis, we are committing a crime against the Irish people. All Parties in this House have paid lip service to the necessity to keep a foundation stock on the land. The Constitution states — I do not know whether this could be argued in the Supreme Court — that it is the duty of the State to create the greatest number of economic holdings possible and to set up the greatest number of families on those holdings. That Constitution is in direct conflict with the Articles of the Rome Treaty. How we are to reconcile our new set-up with what we believed over the years is something I should like the Taoiseach to make clear to the House and the country.

Deputies may not accept my interpretation — indeed, I would not expect they would — but I should like them to hear what a well-known economist, with whom I disagree on many things, had to say on this question of agriculture and the Common Market recently. I refer to Mr. Garret Fitzgerald. I believe there are a number of people in the Fine Gael Party who have the greatest respect for his outlook and his advice as an economist. I understand he has been appointed to advise our manufacturers and industrialists on the problems arising for industry as a result of the Common Market and that he is sitting in on the Committee set up by the Government to report on industries likely to be affected by the Common Market. Obviously, he is looked upon both by the Government and industry as a man who has knowledge of the situation and whose advice is worth taking.

This is what he had to say in the Irish Times recently on Ireland's position in regard to agriculture and the Common Market:

Another extremely important arm of the Common Market agricultural policy is a sharp reduction in the agricultural population of the member countries. If we join the Common Market we would have to accept this policy ... it would require a considerable effort for many Irish people to adjust themselves to the concept of agricultural depopulation as a positive aim of public policy.

That is what we are committing this country to, according to this expert. You can see from his statement that, by our joining the Common Market, the small farmer will be wiped out even more efficiently than he is being wiped out to-day and we will have here, as a result of the existing structure in agriculture, the elimination of the small farmer and the creation of large cattle ranches.

I do not propose to go any further into this matter until we get a clear statement from the Minister for Agriculture. It is extraordinary that the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance should go to London to discuss Ireland's position in regard to industry and agriculture and leave behind them the Minister responsible for the most important Department of State. It shows how little regard the Taoiseach has for agriculture. I am afraid that over the years he has looked upon rural Ireland through very peculiar spectacles. He did not see beyond the confines of Dublin or beyond the protected industries. I think he felt the farmers were a drag on his wonderful programme of industrial development, but I am afraid many of the views he previously held on this matter have been shattered by recent events.

If there is to be any hope of holding the fort, even at this late stage, as far as population is concerned, it can be realised only through the diversification of agriculture. That will be a tremendous task. Instead of concentrating the brains of our Civil Service, of our scientists and of our economic experts on how to save certain protected industries from the full blast of competition, our best brains should be devoted to reorganising agriculture so as to give security to the small farmer and provide sufficient agricultural produce to be sold in alternative markets.

That will not be achieved overnight. Whatever may be the outcome of the Common Market, we should not lose sight of the fact that in the Middle East and Africa, we have newly emerging, independent nations, many of whom are friendly towards Ireland and have regard for our history. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that close economic ties could be established between many of these countries and Ireland. When they get on their feet, such countries could provide a tremendous market for Irish agricultural produce. They will not provide a market for cattle or land, but they will provide a market for products like milk and those which will be produced under General Costello's new project in Mallow. Many types of agricultural produce can be processed by this new method. Because of their lack of bulk and weight, such products can easily be transported to many of these countries, now expanding and feeling their way in the economic sphere.

The opening is there for Ireland now. There is goodwill towards us. All we need is the courage to go ahead and find alternative markets. We know that over the years the Government have shown very little foresight in providing the necessary shipping. I think that difficulty can be overcome. There is a shipping slump and there is no end of shipping available throughout the world today. Therefore, ships should not present any great problem.

I must emphasise that I do not think what I am saying can be done overnight. I do not see much sign, however, of the Government waking up to the potentialities of the tremendous markets available in these countries. I know from people who have spent most of their lives in Nigeria and Ghana, and with whom I have discussed this matter, that these countries would buy from Ireland products such as those processed in Mallow, simply because the people in these countries are not in the class that can afford refrigerators. There are tremendous possibilities if we can get going as quickly as possible.

One of the major snags is the lack of confidence among farmers in regard to new projects. Every small farmer is suspicious of anything new. He is suspicious that it is a "gimmick" and that he will be "had" the same as he was "had" on other lines he went into. He is suspicious the same thing will happen as happened with bacon, eggs and so on. His confidence must be got and, in order to get it, a Government must be ruthless in dealing with the vested interests who up to now have strangled the farming community. I do not think this Government or what I see to be the makings of the next one are capable of taking the necessary steps to bring about this situation.

Deputy McQuillan referred to a point which I noted last week, that is, that it is remarkable that on this most important Estimate, and at this particular time when the people's minds are absorbed with all the possible consequences of the Common Market, the Minister for Agriculture had so little to say regarding our future in that context. It is indicative of the Government's attitude towards our primary industry that they did not find it necessary for the Minister to participate in the talks now in progress in Britain. It clearly indicates that in the mind of the Government, agriculture is not of the importance which some Ministers would imply when speaking on political platforms. It is regrettable that the discussions are being held without the Minister for Agriculture so that he could ensure that the agricultural end will not be forgotten. We can only hope that those who are in Britain at the moment will ensure that whatever transpires will redound to the benefit of the agricultural industry.

We charge the Government with having failed over the past three or four years, when so many other Governments were actively assessing the implications of the creation of the Common Market, to take earlier action and that they have been remiss in that regard. They have now been compelled, in a state of urgency, and having been forced, through a series of questions in this House in relation to its impact on our people, to take urgent measures at the eleventh hour to ascertain just what the consequences will be. When one reflects on the unfortunate waste of time, effort and money over the years in relation to the securing of lucrative markets for our agricultural produce and the great political controversies that waged for so long, it is remarkable that we now have a Fianna Fáil Government candidly announcing that our entry into the Common Market depends on what Britain does.

At long last, seemingly, we have learned that so much depends on our continued enjoyment of the privileges we have had heretofore on the British market that we could not think for a moment of abandoning that position and that we could not even consider the possibility of remaining outside this economic bloc should Britain decide to enter it. This admission is in complete contrast to the type of propaganda the country has endured for so long from the Party now in office in relation to agricultural prospects. It is a clear indication that they have been forced by the passage of time and by experience to realise the importance of this market on our doorstep.

Some Deputies grew eloquent about the possibilities there may be for the Irish farmer on the Continent, if we should enter the Common Market. Those Deputies who are assertive that a great future lies there for Irish agriculture must have made a close examination of the matter and must have had information to help them make up their minds. It is not enough to make a statement to this effect without disclosing the reasons which prompted them to come to this decision, because we know that unless fundamental changes take place here in the agricultural production sphere, it will be very difficult for the agricultural industry to avail, to the best possible extent, of whatever opportunities may develop in the European Economic Community. We must only look upon such statements as ill-prepared and as being made for some other purpose, unless they can support them with proof that they have examined the situation and that they have evidence that such opportunities will emanate from our entry into that Common Market, and that we have girded ourselves for the task that lies ahead of preparing our people for the type of competition they will have to meet and for the change in our methods that will be necessary if we are to compete in a proper way against the obstacles we will find presented to us.

Over the past year, a number of events have transpired which have had a serious effect on the agricultural community and one that has caused considerable disquiet is the fact that a considerable amount of land has passed into the hands of foreign investors.

This is not the responsibility of the Minister for Agriculture.

Surely it is his responsibility in this respect, that farmers' sons who desire to continue the practice of farming, and who cannot find enough to provide a livelihood for the entire family in the home in which they were born and reared, must be given the opportunity to purchase land within the confines of their own country, even if it is outside the confines of the farm on which they were reared? When it was represented to this Government that it was necessary that a proper survey should be undertaken, the Government did not appear to be alive to what was happening. It is a matter of grave concern to many farmers who desire to set their younger sons up in farms to find that the price of such farms is considerably inflated.

The Deputy may raise that on another Vote but the Minister for Agriculture has no responsibility for the matters referred to by the Deputy.

With respect, he has collective responsibility as representing agricultural interests to ensure that whatever land is available is preserved for Irish nationals who wish to avail of it, but since you have given your ruling, Sir, I will pass from the matter. These young farmers to whom I have referred have in the last decade banded themselves together in various organisations and have advanced their knowledge of their profession of farming and have co-operated together in the extension of that knowledge beyond any other organised group in the community. Organisations such as Macra na Feirme, Macra na Tuaithe, the Irish Countrywomen's Association, the National Farmers' Association, the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association and so on, have all been practically applying the theories they have learned in the classroom and have put into practice improved efforts which are now apparent to their neighbours. This improvement is a very healthy one and it is vital that from that will flow increased production. It is a responsibility of the Government to ensure that proper markets are available so that — as unfortunately happened on one occasion in the past when the people responded to the call for increased production — due to inadequate arrangements the prices will not fall to the point where people will be grievously disappointed.

Some play has been made by some Deputies who support the Government on the fact that credit is so freely available, both by banks and the Agricultural Credit Corporation, for the benefit of agriculturists. Credit is very necessary and it is a very good thing if the conditions exist which some Deputies assert do exist. But from our experience, particularly in relation to the Agricultural Credit Corporation, we cannot recognise this rapid expansion of credit that some Deputies would pronounce here as being in existence and we pose the question as to whether very much of this credit that has been made available, particularly by banks to farmers, is being expended in such a way as to guarantee that it will be easy for the farmers to repay the debt and interest.

I know that very many people have availed of credit and have applied it in a sensible manner so that they have found no difficulty in repaying the interest when it fell due and the capital, but it is also true that many others are not utilising credit to the best advantage. It would accordingly be very desirable if whatever credit was released to the agricultural community were given under surveillance of agricultural instructors and under their advice so that such credit would assist those people and ensure they would not be creating difficulties for themselves and their families in the repayment of the debt and interest.

It is true that the original scheme of providing agricultural instructors has not been accepted by general authorities and that there are still many places in the country where much more technical instruction would be utilised if the instructors were provided. I consider it highly desirable that there would be a considerable expansion in agricultural instruction because the instructors already operating are doing an excellent job. If their numbers were increased and if, accordingly, they were made available in more areas they would give invaluable assistance.

I do not know of anything which has had such an impact on the outgoings of the agricultural community in recent years as the increase in agricultural rates. This presents to the farmers a very formidable charge on their holdings and I consider it vitally necessary that action should be taken to prevent any further increases so that people can go forward to a period where they will be able to make some fair assessment of the charges they will have to meet in the earning of their livelihood as farmers.

In the course of his statement, the Minister referred to the desirability of assisting farmers to reduce their cost of production and to increase their productivity. It has for a long time been advanced by this Party that this is the most fundamental part of the economy of this country, but it has been the policy of the Government, far from reducing costs of production, to perform some act on every occasion they have been in office, either by legislation or administrative order, which has resulted in increased costs to the farmers. It is rather late in the day now, but nevertheless welcome, to find that they are beginning to realise the best way of helping farmers is to reduce production costs. We sometimes pinpoint matters where various orders are made which have had the effect of putting up costs, and we hope that this reference by the Minister is not just another pious assertion but that it will lead to the Minister for Agriculture exercising his influence on the Government to ensure that production costs will be reduced so that the agricultural community of this country will be able to face up to the competition which it will be called upon to face if we take the step which is now foreshadowed.

Deputy McLoughlin referred some time ago to a duty on milk cans and the Minister said this duty would be removed without delay. I do not know if that has been done but I hope it will be in the near future. These are matters which would assist the Minister's colleague, the Minister for Transport and Power, who is so assiduous on behalf of the undertaking he directs to grasp as much transport of agricultural production as is possible. On the other hand, we know how inadequate the C.I.E. services are in relation to the transport of many items of agricultural produce.

That is the responsibility of another Minister and accordingly cannot arise under this Vote.

The Minister for Agriculture is responsible for the welfare of the agricultural community in relation to production and costs. I should like the Minister for Agriculture to inquire what the Minister for Transport and Power meant by the issuing of circulars to beet growers in the West-Cork area during the past week asking them whether they would this year sign a contract to have their beet delivered by rail or road. It remains a mystery to the farmers whether or not there is such a choice. I only hope that there is some sincerity in the contents of those circulars and that the Minister for Agriculture will elucidate the matter on behalf of his colleague in the Department of Transport and Power.

It would be desirable also if the Minister would apply himself to underproduction in many parts of the country. We know the advance there is and the improvement that has come about among the young farmers in particular. Many of them could do a lot better if given the opportunity of earning a decent livelihood from their holdings. We had an example in our own area of where there was a considerable debt in the rates of certain holdings but when an arrangement was made in leases being given to productive people, not alone have the rate debts been repaid but the lessees have succeeded in bringing the holdings up to a high state of fertility. That is the type of thing which would be of great benefit not only to the individuals concerned but to the whole community.

Earlier today the Minister denied, when Deputy Crotty spoke, that on any occasion his Party promised the wheatgrowers that the 82/6d. per barrel for wheat would be restored. It is quite understandable that, when he was presented in that capacity, it was regarded at that time that he was speaking the agricultural policy of his Party. We heard the positive assurance given on that occasion that £4 per barrel would be paid. The moment the Government were returned to office, far from its being paid, we can see a more stringent application of the standards which has resulted in a continuing decrease in the price paid for wheat.

We have said on many occasions that we cannot see the sense of not making available to the Irish farmers the wheat which was assessed as being unsuitable for conversion into flour and exporting this wheat, while at the same time we import £1,250,000 worth of pollard. We consider this an outrageous thing to have done. We cannot see the common sense of it. We cannot understand why this was not made available to our own farmers for conversion into animal feeding at the rate at which it was made available to people in other countries. In those circumstances, the Government have been compelled to import this foodstuff. The Minister will have to give a very much clearer explanation than he has given up to now if we are to accept the reasons which prompted him to permit the export of this wheat and the import of a similar type of feeding stuff.

Last week, we heard Deputy Loughman make his statement on this Estimate. He referred to the drift of the population from the land. He did not have time on that occasion to develop his point. We hope that nothing untoward has occurred to him but he did not resume the discussion today. We remember that he had a little discussion with the Minister before he spoke but at any rate he did not resume and we do not know what point he was making.

Nevertheless, there was the point he could have made particularly in relation to the dairying counties today. In consequence of emigration very many people find it very difficult to get labour. I think something should be done to encourage the farm labourer to remain available to the farmer. We should ensure that by the erection of houses and by the making available of other facilities it is possible for us to give, such people will be encouraged to remain working on the land. In very many instances, many of them would be glad to come back to it, if housing and similar facilities were made available to them. There is definitely a break in production in very many areas in recent years in consequence of heavy emigration. We know that in very many instances people who would be prepared to extend production are not able to do so because of the difficulty of securing the necessary labour.

We have got to realise one thing in connection with agriculture. Deputy O'Sullivan alluded to the difficulty of getting farm labour. I am glad that conditions have changed in that regard. A few years ago, there was no outlook whatever for those people. They worked on the land at a miserable wage. They had to go over to England or somewhere else to get employment but that condition of affairs has completely changed.

Today, in my constituency at any rate, those men are able to walk from the farm into employment at anything from £9 per week to £16 per week. That is the basic wage paid. The rate paid in Rushbrooke dockyard is £9.5s. for trainees. You cannot expect an agricultural labourer to remain on the land or a farmer's son to remain on the land when the product of his labour is valued at £5 per week. That is the fundamental position. There is very little use talking about increasing production or anything else until the farmer is put in a position to pay to the ordinary worker on the farm a wage comparable with the wage paid in industry. Until that change is made, there is very little use talking on that line.

I was amused by some of the things Deputy O'Sullivan told us. He spoke of reducing the costs of production and said that the Opposition Party had that as a policy. I suppose it was for a reduction in the cost of production of pigs that we had a condition of affairs where the miller was made the tax-gatherer for the inter-Party Government over a period of three and a half years and where every time the woman of the house went out with a bucket of ration to the pigs, she contributed in a penal tax to the Government.

There was collected from the pig feeders of this country during that period the sum of £1,096,000. That was the information given to me by the Taoiseach in reply to a question of mine. That was the amount collected from the pig feeders in order to increase pig production. That was one of the incentives held out. Every time the woman of the house went out with a dish of meal to the hens, she again contributed in a penal tax on the offals to the upkeep of the mixum-gatherum Government. Those are facts. Those are replies to questions given in this House. If there is any reply to them, I never heard it from the opposite benches.

The Deputy will get a reply.

I put down the questions looking for replies. I can quote a statement made in this House by Deputy Norton, when he was Minister for Industry and Commerce, that, by increasing the price of wheaten offals from £20 a ton to £25 10s. a ton, in four months the millers had collected over £200,000 which went to the relief of the flour subsidy. I followed that up with other questions in this House. The next reply I got was that £760,000 had been collected in that manner. That reply was given by Deputy Corish who was speaking for the Minister for Industry and Commerce of that time, Deputy Norton. I addressed my last question immediately after the Fianna Fáil Government took office and I was then informed that the total amount collected in those years from the pig breeders for the relief of Government taxes was £1,096,000.

That is the incentive to the small farmers in the West in respect of whom the Leader of the Opposition shed crocodile tears — the small farmer in the West with a wife, and six children on a £10 valuation holding. It was our duty to keep the price of the raw material down. This was the manner in which he did it.

Deputy O'Sullivan also complained because the Minister had not gone over to Britain on this matter. A trade agreement was made with Britain in 1956 and agriculture was of so little importance in that trade agreement that it was not even discussed at their Cabinet meeting. At least, that was the statement made in this House by the Leader of the Opposition, Deputy Dillon, or, if it was, he forgot all about it. Deputy Norton was left over to sign an agreement with the British. That was a deliberate breach of Article 5 of the 1948 Trade Agreement and it deprived our beet farmers of a market worth £2 million in sugar.

Deputy Norton very cutely kept silent while the matter was being discussed. I was amazed. Deputy Dillon came to the rescue and said that the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy Norton, did not think it advisable to point out to the British that that was a breach of the 1948 Trade Agreement. Because of that breach of agreement, our people have paid a penal levy of £550,000 to Britain during the past 12 months in order to have our sugar allowed in there.

The evil that men do lives after them. Unfortunate tillage farmers in my constituency and in other beet-growing constituencies are going around begging: "Could you get me even an extra half an acre of beet?" That is a sad condition of affairs considering that the price of beet is fixed on a total wage of £5 15s. per week to agricultural labour.

I have given up talking about wheat. I was accused of making certain statements. I made them; I was proud to make them. I did not know at the time what Deputy Dillon had done. I did not know at the time of the glut of wheat that was allowed to pile up in this country over two or three years before the inter-Party Government left office. I was not then aware of those conditions any more than we were aware of the near-bankruptcy of the whole concern.

The position as regards grain generally in this country today is this: an area of this country that was usually looked upon by the tillage farmer and the small farmer of the south as the area where he could buy his store cattle to fatten — an area that stood out stubbornly in this country from 1939, right through the Emergency, to 1947, whose farmers refused to till and refused to grow wheat when the people wanted bread — during the past four years, has been completely turned over to wheat-ranching and grain-ranching.

I wonder if the Minister would ever take the trouble to examine the millers' lists of producers and the quantities delivered and would he ever think of the number of farmers or so-called farmers — one of whom is living in Kenya and who has a Dublin auctioneer buying conacre land for him here and whose cheque for wheat this year was over £30,000 — engaged in wheat production? Those gentlemen could afford to grow wheat on the basis of half a barrel to the statute acre as a clear profit. Those gentlemen who are growing 500, 600 and 700 acres of wheat could afford to do that. However, that wipes wheat completely out of the market for the ordinary small farmer who has ten or 15 acres out of his 40 acres under grain. Of what use to him is a profit of 30/- an acre on one fourth of his holding? That is what has happened to wheat. The sooner we have firm wheat contracts based on what was produced on those holdings during the Emergency, the sooner we shall get nearer the market as regards grain.

Deputy McQuillan was moaning about the position in relation to the Common Market. He said we would be worse off to go into it than otherwise. I have the White Paper here. It gives me, on feeding barley, the information that we are paid the lowest price in that European market. In Austria, the price is 26/6d. per cwt.; in Belgium, 27/1d.; in Denmark, 24/2d.; in Germany, 32/2d.; in Ireland, 18/6d.; in Italy, 28/6d.; in the Netherlands, 24/7d.; in Norway, 33/-; in Sweden, 28/4d.; in the United Kingdom, 19/8d.; plus this little item, namely, that the guaranteed standard price paid to farmers for the 1961 crop is 27/7d. per cwt.; a new scheme to encourage growers to spread their sales of barley comes in for the 1961/62 cereal year. Therefore, the English farmer, who is quoted at the rate of 19/8d. per cwt., actually gets 27/6d. per cwt. for his barley. The Irish farmer gets 18/6d. Surely there is something wrong? I can see a very happy day when the prices are levelled out. I can see some of the promises I made in Kilkenny coming to fruition, if we go into the Common Market on that basis alone.

Again, I should like to take the position of the people I know best down in the south, the ordinary dairy farmers. According to this White Paper, the average annual price for milk delivered to creameries for all forms of utilisation is 2/5d. in Austria, 2/1d. in Belgium, 2/1d. in Denmark, 2/8d. in Germany, 2/5d. in Italy, 2/7d. in the Netherlands, 3/5d. in Norway, 2/10d. in Sweden, 3/2d. in Switzerland and 3/2d. in the United Kingdom. The price here is 1/9d. There is a wide difference between 1/9d. a gallon for milk and 2/8d. a gallon for milk, which is the average of those figures. I wonder what all our geniuses are doing?

If we go into the Common Market and it means a levelling of prices and that we will be entitled to get the same prices as other countries are getting in the Common Market, we will be able to pay £8 or £9 a week to our agricultural labourers and our sons to keep them on the land and not have them running off it. That is the difference I see. I can say quite frankly that I cannot agree with what Deputy McQuillan has said in that connection.

The position with regard to sugar and beet is the same. It will be improved, and so far as I can see from this Table, we will get as good a price — or a better price — as is being paid to any European country for agricultural produce. That has convinced me anyway, and until I see it proved to the contrary, I will believe it is very definite that the first to benefit by a change to the Common Market will be the agricultural community. As I said, we have to change, whether we like it or not.

The day when the agricultural labourer was prepared to work for 10/-a week has long gone. The prices of our agricultural produce have not kept pace with the enormous increases in the value of labour in the industrial markets. I think I have a better knowledge of that situation than any individual in this House. There is no day or night that three or four boys do not come to me saying they want letters and when I look at the conditions in which they are working. I have no hesitation whatever in giving them a letter which will help to improve their conditions and raise their standard of living from a £5 a week standard to a £9 or £10 a week standard.

If we are to keep our small farmers in existence and if we are to continue them on the land, the outlook in regard to agriculture and agricultural production will have to be completely changed. We will not keep them at £5 10s. a week. They walk off at 12 o'clock on Saturday in industrial employment and they need not bother their heads again until Monday morning. Every minute they spend over a certain time must be paid for by the industrialists at double time rate or thereabouts but cows have to be milked and fed on Sunday as well as Monday, and cattle have to be fed on Sunday as well as Monday. There will have to be a complete change if we are to keep those people on the land as grain growers or stock feeders.

The small farmer, as we knew him, with the 15 to 30 acre holding must be put into extensive production, growing vegetables and fruit for which there is very ready market. He will have to be trained, and he cannot get that training from the present agricultural instructor, because the agricultural instructor knows damn all about it. If we had horticultural instructors, they would know the advantages of growing vegetables and fruit for the city markets. Those are the men we must get. We can all thank God that we have a man with that outlook who has seen that conditions of affairs and has started a factory at Mallow, and has opened a market for potatoes in Galway and in the West.

Those are the changes we need. Those are the crops that will bring in anything from £100 to £200 gross per acre to the man who wants to keep his family at home. He will not keep them at home on 1/9d. a gallon for milk. He will not keep them at home rearing store cattle, and he will not keep them at home in competition with the wheat ranchers in Meath, Westmeath and Kildare. That is why I am glad that Lieutenant General Costello has opened up that line and has given a ray of hope to the small farmers of Ireland.

I do not believe in taking up too much time on the Agricultural Estimate. My belief is that when we are dealing with this Estimate next year, we shall be dealing with it from a completely different standpoint from the standpoint of today.

I take it that under the Common Market regulations, Britain will no longer be allowed to put a levy on Irish sugar in Great Britain. That will mean practically doubling our beet acreage and will open up an enormous market for the ordinary tillage farmer. We shall have this pleasure also, that the higher the wage goes, the better will be the price for beet. It is the one crop in which we succeeded in having the price based on the cost of production plus a fair profit. How any Labour Minister for Industry and Commerce could go over to Britain and kill the expansion of that industry passes my comprehension. It was done, due again to the complete ignorance of the Leader of the Opposition who told us: "It was not discussed in the Cabinet to my knowledge and, if it was, I have forgotten all about it." It was of so little interest to him! If Deputies doubt my word they can read it in the Reports in the Library. Anyone who was not listening here to Deputy Dillon's statement as to the reasons why the British put a levy of £16 a ton on our sugar will find it in the Library. Deputy Dillon's admission that it was a breach of the 1948 Trade Agreement is there also.

I do not wish to labour this matter but it had a very serious effect on production in my constituency. It had a very serious effect among the ordinary tillage farmers of Galway, Carlow, Thurles, Cork, Kerry and Waterford. They were all set for expansion of production. The farmer who had three acres of beet was looking for six; the farmer who had two acres was looking for three. I was a member of a deputation to General Costello one day in connection with the question of beet and I saw the very type of person who has ruined the growing of wheat and barley in this country.

A message came that there was a gentleman below to see General Costello. Evidently he had been there before because the General said: "Send him up here into the room." The gentleman came up. He was farming 560 acres of land and had grown 560 acres of wheat two years in succession. He was in with General Costello looking for a contract for 200 acres of beet. That is what is happening, and one can gauge its effect on the ordinary tillage farmer. This industry in its expansion will succeed in keeping at least some of our people on the land. It is giving employment to many people. It is only by such developments in regard to agriculture that our economy will benefit.

I was amused to hear Deputy Dillon talk about bovine tuberculosis. About ten years ago, Deputy Dillon gave us on these benches a big sermon about a place called Bansha in County Tipperary. There are more T.B. cattle in Bansha today than there were the day Deputy Dillon as Minister for Agriculture told us of his scheme.

The Deputy is not being fair to the people of Bansha.

I am telling the truth and I challenge contradiction on that. There are more T.B. cattle in Bansha today than there were ten years ago.

They must be getting them from Cork.

Wherever they are getting them from, they are there.

(Interruptions.)

We must settle down to one thing and that is to decide that bovine T.B. must be got rid of as quickly as possible. I do not want to comment on the measures being taken. I always thought the Minister for Agriculture was a man who would put his foot down and say: "You must do it." If that had not been done in the past, many of our people would have gone hungry. If he would put his foot down now in regard to bovine T.B. we would get rid of it very quickly.

I spoke on this Estimate last year and I am disappointed the Minister did not carry out the wish of the House as regards——

(Interruptions.)

These interruptions must cease. Deputy Tierney must be allowed to make his speech.

I was disappointed the Minister did not implement the wishes expressed by this House last year in relation to the prices paid to tillage farmers. Disapproval was expressed last year of the prices paid for both malting and feeding barley. The Minister is aware that we all deplore the lack of employment on the land. The average tillage farmer will receive this year, as he did last year, roughly 37/-per barrel for feeding barley. Out of that will come the hire of the sack and the hire of the lorry. Last year, it was very difficult to get the millers to take the barley at that price. They complained they had too much barley on their hands. The wealthy farmers who could store their barley received roughly 48/- per barrel from the millers.

I raised the question last year of the importation of oats. I understood the Minister to say, in reply to Deputy McQuillan, that he would not allow in any oats, if he could possibly help it. Within a few weeks, he signed an order for the importation of some 3,000 tons at a time when racehorse owners and trainers were negotiating for oats with Donegal and north Tipperary farmers. In north Tipperary, we grow very little oats now because we found they were completely uneconomic. Some racehorse owners and trainers hold that their horses run faster on foreign oats. Remembering the many racehorse owners and trainers who use home produced oats and whose horses are just as successful as, if not more successful than, those fed on imported oats, one immediately sees the fallacy in the argument. It is the same old story: anything that comes out of the country is no good. I was disappointed the Minister yielded to pressure.

It was the pressure of the facts, as I found them.

I am sorry the Minister yielded. If others yielded in the past, that is no excuse for the Minister to yield now. The tillage farmers are getting out of oats altogether now because they can find no market for them, I regret that because I am a firm believer in rotation.

With regard to grants, I do not believe the system is a good one. The manure subsidy is some £4 or £5 per ton. The man who really benefits by that subsidy is the man with the cheque book who can afford to buy large quantities. The big rancher benefits more than all the rest of the parish put together.

Because he buys more.

I suppose that advantage applies in every phase and in every field.

I quite agree. That is why I believe the scheme should be operated on a valuation basis.

Or a co-operative effort on the part of the farmers.

There are farmers in the Minister's county who can buy only a ton, or two, or three tons. I admit the subsidy is welcome. But the same situation operates here as operates in relation to housing grants: those who have get more and those who have not get less. The Minister should introduce a scheme on a valuation basis; the smaller the valuation, the bigger the grant for manure. That would help to put more people on the land.

Deputy Corry referred to the Sugar Company. He was quite correct in everything he said. Tillage would be dead in north Tipperary, were it not for the beet scheme. If the Sugar Company had to close down, there would not be ten per cent. of farm labourers employed any longer on the land. Beet is one crop that does ensure employment on the land. We have a very good tillage area in north Tipperary and if we could get something in Thurles on the same lines as the project in Mallow, the people in north Tipperary would be very grateful indeed. Great credit is due to Lieut-General Costello for the work he is doing. If we could, through the good offices of the Government, get some of the valuable work now being done in Mallow carried over to Thurles, the people of Tipperary would be very thankful.

Deputy Corry talked about T.B. and the reactor cows in Bansha, in South Tipperary. He forgot to mention that a Fianna Fáil Government were in office for a good deal of the time the scheme was in operation and they failed to get rid of the reactors. He seemed to blame someone at this side of the House for that. The Minister will have to change the scheme. In the lower end of Lower Ormonde, we find ourselves in a very peculiar situation. One part of north Tipperary goes into part of Laois-Offaly and a part of Laois-Offaly comes into north Tipperary so that the farmers there are separated from their natural markets and marts. The man in Birr has to go into Roscrea or Nenagh while people in the surrounding parts of north and north-west Tipperary have to go into Laois-Offaly. Perhaps the Minister finds the same difficulty in other clearance areas.

I hope that if the Minister comes back to office, he will not allow the importation of oats and that he will give the tillage farmer a better crack of the whip than he has given them for the past few years.

I have heard a great number of speeches on this Estimate but, to my mind, the previous speakers, Deputy Tierney and Deputy Corry, do not seem to know what they want. They want the small farmer to be able to prosper in every possible way. They want him to be able to feed more pigs and at the same time, they want the Minister to increase the price of barley and to pay a better price for every other grain product. It may be argued that more farmers should grow their feeding stuffs themselves but the feeders I know are buyers and they say that they are priced out of the world market because of the prices they have to pay for their feeding stuffs. They argue that it is impossible for them to compete with their bacon in the British market against the Danes and Dutch to whom we sold wheat at £16 a ton at the time we bought pollard at £20 a ton to feed pigs with. And then Deputy Corry comes along with his annual talk about a penal tax. I am sick of listening to that talk. The Government which Deputy Corry has been supporting for the past five years have continued that penal tax but he stopped his criticism at 1957. He also stopped his Parliamentary Questions at 1957.

The position of the small farmer in this country is that he is subsidising wheat growing and also subsidising the other activities of the Department of Agriculture. The sooner we realise that, the better. We have put up the price of pollard, bran and other by-products of wheat in order to be able to pay our farmers a certain price for wheat.

Whither Ireland and whither agriculture in the time that is facing us in the Common Market? The Government blundered and blundered badly over the past four years. In that space of time, they were asked on several occasions by the leaders of the Opposition Parties in this House to set up a committee to inquire into and gather information on the whole question of the Common Market. If they had done that, they would have put the Taoiseach in the position this evening of being able to provide Mr. Macmillan with some information about the Common Market, instead of having to go over there hat in hand to know what is happening and how it will affect us. I would have liked to see the Minister for Agriculture over there this evening and to see some other Vote before us. It looks bad and it looks as if agriculture may not be a matter of great concern in the years that are facing us.

What I do bring the Minister and his Department to task for is that they should have been in a position to give us some information regarding our position vis-à-vis the Common Market. The reason I take them to task for that is that, in 1957, the Fianna Fáil Government, with a flourish of trumpets, announced that they were giving £250,000 to the Minister for Agriculture to be used in the extension and improvement of marketing facilities for our agricultural produce. That £250,000 has been carried over every year and has not been used. In December last, when I asked a question about it, I was told that £30,000 had been spent. Committee meetings were held and reports were got out but no effort was made to extend or improve our markets. If constant and consistent exploratory action had been taken by the Minister with regard to the countries in the Six, we would now know where we were. Instead we have to listen to the claptrap of Deputy Corry who insults everybody in the House and then runs away and will not listen to other people.

He says that we should go into the Common Market. I do not know whether we should or not. Deputy Corry does not know.

What about the Gallup poll?

That is the joke of the year. Deputy Corry can tell us his expert opinion based on his knowledge of industries, steel and unemployment, that it would be a good thing for the farmers to go into the Common Market. In the same breath, he tells us that we must go in for small holdings of intensive crops. He wants the farmers to become market gardeners but I can tell him that the most intensive farmer in Europe is the French farmer, Jacques, with an average of five acres. These intensive, hard working and up-to-date farmers have been digging up the roads of their country for the past three weeks. He is in the Common Market and that is what it has done for him.

I do not know whether or not it is right to join the Common Market but we should be cautious about what we are doing. The Government blundered. The Government did nothing for the past four years. The Minister for Agriculture and his Department had £250,000 of the taxpayer's money at their service to explore, to extend or to improve our agricultural markets abroad. They did nothing. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. They did not spend any of the money. They did not know what to do.

Did the Deputy——

Deputy Moher gave his clap-trap here this evening and I did not interrupt him. He told us that everybody will leave the land. Deputy Moher who has interrupted me sought to justify his statement that everybody must leave the land. I hope people will be put in a position that they can remain on the land and have a livelihood on it.

(Interruptions.)

There are Deputies in the Fianna Fáil benches who were selected as candidates with no other qualification other than that they were able to interrupt meetings of their political opponents. That is about the only thing they brought into this House with them.

It is good to read in the Minister's brief that trade agreements with Britain, of which the latest was negotiated in 1960, are the main basis of our agricultural export trade. It was treason to say that at one time, not so long ago. It is something that I was beaten up by Fianna Fáil supporters for saying. The Minister states that these trade arrangements are valuable and that they are balanced on our side by the import preferences granted to products of British origin.

How can that be reconciled with Deputy Corry's argument and the penal tax that we are supposed to pay to Great Britain? Deputy Corry wants a free market for Irish sugar in Great Britain and a protected market for Irish sugar here. What will happen the beet growers of this country if we go into the Common Market and if cheap Continental sugar is dumped in this country? I would ask Deputies to consider that question seriously.

On the subject of beet contracts and expansion of the Irish sugar industry, I had complaints from constituents and from people on the other side of the river, in County Kilkenny, who were original contractors and consistent contractors to the beet factories. In the recent expansion they got nothing at all. There was no expansion for them. They were able to show me dockets that proved that they had grown beet which was brought from Waterford to Tuam. Now we discover that people in the West of Ireland, who would not support their factory in Tuam, woke up to the fact that it was profitable and they have to get the contracts as against the people who were supporting beet growing.

Deputy Corry complained about barley prices and said that the Irish farmer is paid less for barley than the farmers in Austria, Belgium, England and elsewhere. When I was growing barley during a European war, I was nailed down to 35/- a barrel and I discovered that the brewers in Ireland were paying 72/- a barrel for it in Great Britain. It was only with the passage of years I discovered that the price of 35/- had been negotiated by the Irish Beet Growers for the Irish barley growers without the Irish barley growers being consulted and that Deputy Corry was one of the foremost negotiators. That is a fact and the Deputy who is laughing knows it. He is laughing because he can make use of that against Deputy Corry in his constituency.

It is very interesting to read about the great factory to be built in Mallow for the processing of fruit, vegetables and meat. I could not help looking at the map and asking myself what is the area of least frost in Ireland. I asked a fruit grower about that and he told me it is Piltown, South Tipperary, and South Kilkenny. I asked him would that not be a good place to have one of these factories and he said: "With all respect to Lieut-General Costello, it would be the best place to have this factory, because in Roscrea there is the Roscrea Bacon Factory and Crowley's; in Clonmel, Clonmel Foods and Burke's, in Waterford, Clover Meats, Denny's, Bowes' — all meat factories. I have been so used to seeing this Government siting factories, especially when they went into the fish business, that I would not be surprised where factories were set up. I mention it with all respect to Lieut-General Costello.

He did not tell you that we placed the factory in Mallow, I am sure.

No, I have been always puzzled, as the Minister has mentioned it, as to who is responsible for the siting of factories. They manage to appear in the most extraordinary places, especially when a Fianna Fáil Government are in office.

That is the only time they are established.

I can assure the Minister that there are plenty of factories established but there is none established in my constituency while a Fianna Fáil Government are in office. Six factories were established when the Party I support were in office and they are still going strong.

We are dealing with only one at the moment.

I will be pardoned for saying, Sir, that factories are sited in extraordinary places.

The placing of factories does not arise on this Estimate.

These are factories dealing with agricultural produce.

The general placing of factories does not arise.

I wish Deputies on the opposite side would wake up. They are like "Weary Willies" wandering in and out of the House.

And "Tired Tims".

I read and re-read the Minister's brief but he never mentioned anything about the Common Market except en passant. He never said what the activities of his Department in this regard were and I had to take it for granted they did nothing. I think I am right about that. He never said what line the Government intended to take in regard to agriculture or what leadership he intended to give the Irish farmer. I hope he will tell us these things when he is replying.

I got a circular from An Foras Talúntais in regard to pigs. It was very interesting. It mentioned that a great firm of bacon curers in England were now looking for heavy pigs. I referred to heavy pigs here a couple of years ago and even some members of my own Party were inclined to think I was off the beam. However, I have some experience of this. I remember when an enormous number of heavy pigs were walked out of this country. There was no necessity for grading pigs at that time. Denny's, Clover Meats or whoever the curers were culled off the tops and the most suitable were shipped to Great Britain. They were sent to Birmingham and other places in England. The hams were cut off from these very fat pigs and sold as the great English York ham. Other cuts were not cured at all and were sold as fresh pork. Pigs which were very fat, perhaps 200 lbs. dead weight, were trimmed.

It was a profitable business to feed these pigs. It cost about half as much to put the last quarter on the pig as it did the second last quarter. Whatever it cost to bring the pig to 1½ cwts., it cost about half as much to bring him from 1½ to 2 cwts. The farmer did not feed him with a ration but with whatever he had around the place. He had not to keep to a ration then, but now he is told he must stick to a ration to produce good pigs.

I know it is practically impossible, because of the levy and so on, to ship live pigs in present conditions. However, I would ask the Minister to look into this matter, because it is of some moment to us. In the dear, dead days before we had economic wars and such like, we were able to cure sufficient bacon for our own needs and export immense quantities as well. I shall give an instance. In the year before the deluge, 1931, we shipped 295,000 cwts. of bacon, 15,000 cwts. of hams — 2,000 cwts. of hams to France, a luxury trade — 373,000 cwts. of pork, 44,000 cwts. of other pig meat, and in spite of that, we shipped 476,000 live pigs.

How much American bacon did we import?

The amount of American bacon we imported would not scrape a rasher on everybody's pan one day a week. It was used only during the harvest when the men had a few pints in them because the average farm labourer did not like it.

The standard of living was higher in the past so?

No. We treated the farm labourer better maybe. They would not have it. The amount brought in was infinitesimal. The point is that we were able to produce that quantity. That is something the Minister should welcome being reminded of. If the Minister could tell us that we had been able to increase our exports of bacon and pork and also our exports of live pigs, that would not be anything to be ashamed of. It is something that, had the Minister been able to say it, would have got triple headlines in the following day's Irish Press.

The production of bacon and pork is higher than it was in any year since the thirties, and as high as the thirties.

Would it not be a wonderful thing if we were able to export over 400,000 large pigs as well? That would be an added income for our small farmers. The pig is the best "crop" for the small farmer. He can get into pigs for very little capital outlay and he knows something about bringing up and feeding pigs.

The last thing I want to say to the Minister is this. His colleagues, the Taoiseach, the Minister for Finance and the Minister for External Affairs, an able negotiator, are in London at present. I hope they will not be influenced to have us enter the Common Market on terms that would not be to the advantage of agriculture. I would ask the Minister for Agriculture — and I have an idea he is a man who would do so — to stand firm against that.

When Deputy Lynch started to speak, he told us he proposed to answer the case made by Deputy Corry for the barley growers of the South of Ireland. Although I listened very carefully, I did not notice any great elucidation of the position with regard to growing barley. As he opened his address, he made one remark which I should like to correct. He referred to the fact or the alleged fact, that wheat is subsidised. I should like to tell the Deputy that it is not subsidised and that it has not been for quite a while.

While we are on the subject of wheat, I should like to mention a few general points about it. I listened to Deputy McQuillan when he spoke about the position that obtained regarding the inclusion of the 1960 wheat crop in the grist. I have also heard Fine Gael Deputies speak on the same subject. There is a point which I think escaped them. Deputy McQuillan, of course, coming from Roscommon, and some of the Fine Gael Deputies who may have read a lot about it and investigated it, may know more about it than I do. I only make my living by growing it. The position that obtained in regard to the wheat harvest last year, in all the wheat growing areas in the South of Ireland was that in July and August the weather was so continually bad and wet that the wheat crop was attacked by the septoria fungus. The result was that the wheat failed to mature and failed to develop any starch reserve at all. This in turn necessitated the intervention of the Department of Agriculture and the Minister for Agriculture to ensure that the farmers' produce would be purchased. I, as a wheat grower and as one who makes his living by growing wheat, would like to say that the quality of our produce, especially in the intensive wheat-growing areas, was very inferior last year.

I would be the last to stand up in this House and advocate anything but the full use of Irish wheat in the production of bread at any other time. For instance, in the previous year we had wheat of excellent quality. It was not unheard of in 1959 to see wheat coming in from the combine and bushelling 66 or 67 lbs. In a season like that, I do not see how any case can be made for the inclusion in the grist of any foreign wheat at all. I must tell the Fine Gael Deputies and Deputy McQuillan, as evidently they are not aware of the fact, that in an area such as Carlow and Kilkenny where wheat is the stable crop in farm rotation, the wheat is liable, especially in recent years, to attack from the septoria fungus.

I should like to pay tribute to the Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Finance for the way they stepped in at a considerable cost to ensure that this wheat was purchased. I want to deal in a moment with the general situation with regard to the production of wheat. Since I came into this House I have been told on a few occasions by Fine Gael Deputies that we Deputies from Carlow-Kilkenny owe our presence here to the fact that we represent a wheat growing area. It is better to begin at the beginning and to review the Fianna Fáil attitude, as we see it, from the beginning. In this debate almost every speaker mentioned the small farmer, some of them with sincerity and others for different reasons, possibly the proximity of a general election. I believe that Fianna Fáil introduced wheat-growing to provide the small farmer, especially in the South of Ireland, with a crop which would ensure him a cash return and a decent means of livelihood. Fianna Fáil quite rightly started the "Grow More Wheat" campaign. That campaign kept bread on the tables of this country during the war period. Fianna Fáil, and others in imitation of us, continued that policy.

In the last ten years, the picture has been changing rapidly. Among the factors that has changed this position is the advent of the farm tractor, the combine drill and the combine harvester, and what might be called the carpet bagger wheat rancher, or wheat conacre operator, or whatever you like to call him. The upshot of all these circumstances and factors combined so that the profits from wheat growing had been lifted out of the hands of the people for whom they were originally intended. It would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that ten or 15 years ago the production of wheat on any considerable scale was confined to some areas, principally in the provinces of Leinster and Ulster. It has now been transferred to the central plain and other places that have been traditionally cattle grazing areas and which, in my opinion, should continue to be utilised in that way.

Farmers who up to then had got a pretty decent living from the growing of wheat found themselves thrust out of business, and out of the market which they so steadily and faithfully supplied with an excellent product, by these large scale conacre operators who produce an inferior product by virtue of the fact that it is not possible for a man to lavish the same care on 200 or 300 acres of wheat as on two acres, five acres or ten acres. It must be remembered that even in the worst of harvests, one would get a couple of fine days and a couple of days is sufficient for a small wheat producer to round up his crop in good condition. They did that even last year, despite the fact that the grain in the crop was of indifferent quality but the quality was not indifferent because of any fault of the farmer.

I should like to compare last year with 1954. In 1954 we had a very bad harvest but the period preceding the harvest was an excellent season for the production of wheat. I remember hearing Deputy Dillon speaking on this subject and he contrasted what happened to wheat in 1954 with what happened last year. The difference, for Deputy Dillon's benefit, was this: in 1954 we had an excellent yield and the only thing wrong with the wheat was that it was wet. Last year it was not only wet but diseased as well, and there was very little starch in the wheat.

The most recent arrangement made to cope with this over-production of wheat, to cope with the problem that has been aggravated by people who are not traditional wheat growers but who came into the industry to cash in on it, is that we have the system called the barrel levy. This applies without any burden on the taxpayer. The grower pays for his own over-production. I think that system is essentially bad. The most unfortunate part of it is that it militates more against the small farmer than the big grower. Unfortunately the small grower is the man who can least afford to take the rap.

Kilkenny County Committee of Agriculture recently considered this question and sent a suggestion to the Department of Agriculture to deal with it. We saw on the one hand that we had over-production. We saw a rising pig population, an increasing need for feeding barley and a necessity to import feeding stuff for pigs. The committee were rightly of the opinion that if the price of feeding barley were adjusted slightly to such an extent that some of the effort now being expended on the growing of wheat could be diverted to the production of feeding barley, a twofold purpose would be served. In the first place, the total volume of wheat produced would be decreased so that no levy would be charged on the farmer for the wheat he would produce and, secondly, a more satisfactory price would be obtainable for feeding barley.

The increase in the price of barley I would envisage would be from 38/-to £2 per barrel. I think that would not be an excessive demand when we consider the amount of money the Government have spent in the last three years in coming to the rescue of farmers who have suffered in two bad harvests. If we have another bad harvest I would, of course, expect a Fianna Fáil Government to come to the farmers' rescue again, but to have this over-production of wheat as a permanent feature of our farming economy is not a thing to be desired. The most satisfactory way of solving the question is to raise the price of feeding barley so that we would ensure that the growing of wheat would drop to the level we require.

Before leaving the subject of wheat, I should like to express a private opinion which I have already threshed out in public with the Irish Flour Millers' Association from whom I got no satisfaction. I believe the screenings cut introduced by the millers is fraudulent and unjustifiable. When a farmer brings his wheat to the take-in point, the first thing that happens is that its bushel weight is determined and normally deductions are made for wheat bushelling under weight. A moisture test is also done and a further deduction made in respect of moisture content. When all these tests are done, a screening test is applied and a deduction made in that respect as well. My contention is that deductions made for bushelling and moisture content are ample. The presence of screenings of any kind in a sample will automatically lower the bushelling and increase the moisture content.

When the first two tests — the bushelling and the moisture content—are done, every deduction that should be made in respect of quality has been made and I submit that the screenings test is a second fine or penalty on the wheat producer. I took this matter up publicly with the representatives of the Irish Flour Millers' Association at one of the receptions they staged for county committees of agriculture. They asked for questions and I submitted that one. When they invited those questions I expected they would follow them through. The person to whom I addressed this question was a very prominent miller. He floundered visibly when I asked it and his parting shot was that he would have the matter examined and write to me. He said that publicly and I have been waiting now for three months or more for his explanation. I have not heard from him nor from the Department of Agriculture.

Deputy T. Lynch spoke about the Common Market, about our prospects and our future, and was plainly despondent about it. He prefaced his remarks by saying candidly that he did not know anything about it and, as he spoke, it became quite evident that he did not. However, he seemed perfectly sure that the Government had made a mess of it even before any decision of any kind had been taken. I, like Deputy T. Lynch, do not profess to be an economist but I should like to say that the average farmer's hope in the Common Market is for an increased price for his produce in Britain.

Most people know that the Continent is pretty well self-sufficient in most food commodities and, therefore, there are very small prospects of our exporting any great amounts of food to Europe. We would hope that the agricultural wing of the new Community would secure for us a more satisfactory price for food products than we are getting now. That is likely to happen. Both the Danish and French peasants are quite emphatic in rejecting the prices they are now getting for the foodstuffs they sell. Fine Gael speakers on this subject seemed to be under the impression that, if we do enter the Common Market it is to Europe and to nowhere else we shall be selling our products. I cannot see why this should be. I think we shall continue to export the bulk of our foodstuffs to Britain.

Deputy Moher referred to the very deplorable fact that we manufacture most of our milk into butter. We should follow the recommendations of the committee set up to advise on this matter and diversify our products, especially into dried milk. There is nothing at all, so far as I can see, to prevent us from selling a product like that in the Continent of Africa and possibly in other markets as well. In fact, the committee that reported on this matter were confident that if we could capture even a tiny fraction of the huge potential market in Asia and Africa, we would have a sufficient outlet for all our surplus milk.

I do not think that at the present time the dairy industry has sufficient machinery to deal with that problem. In the dairy set-up at present, we have a lot of co-operative societies, each one of which is a little republic of its own. Each one is too small to take the initiative in changing its pattern of production. I should like to see the I.A.O.S. or some other organisation give a lead in amalgamating many of the small creameries.

There are scores of creameries in my own county—County Kilkenny— and in the South of Ireland generally and the activities of each creamery are closely circumscribed by its own little circle of suppliers. Very often, I regret to say, their activities are dominated by a person whose vision does not extend any further than the edge of the parish and his own well-being as a whole. We pay a subvention every year to the I.A.O.S. who, by their very title, are the people who should long ago have tried to get these co-operative societies to co-operate with one another in relation to a project like the production of dried milk or some other project.

It would be quite impossible for any individual little creamery, in my county at any rate, to face the financial commitments involved. If our co-operative set-up were running as it should run, they should have no difficulty at all. I should like to say a great deal about co-operatives but I will leave it until another time. There are a great many cases in relation to the dairy co-operative set-up that leave a great deal to be desired. There are a great many co-operative creameries and co-operative dairy societies in the country which have failed the country. Many co-operative societies have failed to do anything except provide a place to sell milk. They have fallen down completely on the job, if you compare the fruits of their labours with the success that co-operatives have achieved in other places.

I should like to urge upon the Minister the importance of the diversification of our effort into the production of the milk products other than butter. With an increasing cattle population, this problem is one that is going to be more acute every year.

There is just one other thing about which I want to say a word or two. Several Deputies mentioned the oats position that obtained last year. It was alleged that the Minister and the Department of Agriculture had been less than dutiful in permitting the import of foreign oats. I do not know what the situation was in regard to oats in other parts of the country. I grow some oats myself. Last year, it was not a successful crop and I do not think it would have been suitable for feeding bloodstock. I can speak only from my own personal experience but there are many who would be quite ready to agree that that was the position last year.

May I congratulate the last speaker on his well-informed speech? Although I do not agree with everything he said, I agree with a lot of it. It is nice to hear a member of the Fianna Fáil Party express an independent opinion such as he did. I hope the Minister was listening.

It is the only Party in which you would hear that.

I am afraid not. The pity of it is we do not hear it often enough. I was so surprised that I felt it was necessary to offer my congratulations.

They are hiding behind their bushels.

Before dealing with the Estimate and the Minister's speech, I should like to say a few nice things about the Department of Agriculture because I will have some hard things to say later on. Britain at the end of last year and the beginning of this year was faced with a serious epidemic of foot and mouth disease. It was largely her own fault, due to the importation of materials from South America. I should like to congratulate the Minister and his Department for having kept the disease out of this country. It was not a very easy thing to do because the disease broke out in many parts of England and practically every port was affected. The restrictions the Department of Agriculture imposed were stringent and careful and they did a good job in keeping the disease out of this country.

At the moment there is one thing that puzzles me very much. The Minister referred to our exports. He referred to the fact—I am speaking from memory; I have not got his speech here — that we exported £71,000,000 of agricultural produce to the United Kingdom. We exported £9,000,000 worth to America and £8,750,000 worth to Europe as well. At the present moment, discussions are going on in London between senior Ministers of the Fianna Fáil Government and the British Cabinet.

These discussions are as vital to the Irish economy and to Irish agriculture as any discussion that ever took place. What takes place in these discussions must revolve around agriculture, if there is any meaning in the statement from the Government benches and which we have had over the months that fundamentally we depend upon agriculture. We have three Ministers going over to negotiate on and discuss this important problem which is so vital to our fundamental industry— agriculture—and the Minister for Agriculture has not been taken along.

What exactly does this mean? Are this Government interested in agriculture? Do the Government recognise, as they have so often stated in the past few months, that fundamentally everything is based on agriculture and that our very existence depends on it? It is hard for the ordinary person to understand the situation. What does it mean? Does it mean that the Government are dictated to from Dublin and that the agricultural section of rural Ireland have no say whatever?

Before I leave that matter, I should like to quote from a document in my possession. Mr. Heath, Lord Privy Seal, specially dealing with European matters, spoke in the British House of Commons on 17th May as follows. The document I quote from is the Council of Europe Draft Report on European Economic Relations by the Rapporteur to the Economic Committee, a Dutch Senator, Senator Vos:

Mr. Heath admitted that agriculture should be included in any overall arrangement between the United Kingdom and the Six, which adhered to the principle of a common agricultural policy; but he also added that EEC would no doubt be prepared to make some modifications in its proposals for the common agricultural policy with a view to meeting certain British difficulties.

That is as long ago as 17th May. The Vice-Chairman of EEC who deals specially with agriculture stated publicly the other day in Brussels that the British have been endeavouring for the past 15 years to alter their agricultural structural set-up. Is it not obvious that negotiations on agriculture have been going on in Europe during the past ten months or so? The first time the Government do anything about it is in the past few days and then they go without the Minister for Agriculture. If Fianna Fáil are a Party who are interested in agriculture, interested in the welfare of the farmers and interested in rural Ireland, all I can say is that it is a very strange way to go about it.

Now I should like to come to the Minister's speech. He did not say very much. He did not refer to the Common Market at all. I am not surprised at that considering that the negotiations in that respect were going on without his having any say in the matter. However, he did say one thing in the speech which I was glad to hear him say. I have been trying to get an acknowledgment from him and from his officials over the past three or four years that the prices of cattle were falling. This is the first acknowledgment from this Government that the prices of cattle are falling. Every rural Deputy knows that over the past three or four years there has been a gradual deterioration in the prices of cattle.

The Minister, however, went on to say that there were several reasons for it. He believed it was due to the importation of Argentine beef; he believed it was due to excessive consumption of broilers and he referred to several other matters. But that did not seem to satisfy him and he was not quite sure what it was due to. Is that not a dreadful admission for a Minister for Agriculture to have to make to Parliament on his annual Estimate?

First of all, for the first time, he realises the prices of cattle are falling, in spite of all the statistics his Government produced. Every week we get statistics trying to prove that the prices of cattle are static. The prices have been falling over the years. The Minister comes in here and tells us the prices are falling and he does not know why they are falling. I will tell him why.

The reason the prices of cattle are falling is that the system of buying cattle in Britain has completely changed in the past two or three years and neither he nor his Department appear to be cognisant of the fact. Some years back, we had a heavy export of store cattle to Britain. Then they started extensively to produce more themselves. By more modern methods of production and heavy subsidisation, they produced more cattle. In the struggle to keep pregnancy also helped to give them more cattle. In the struggle to keep down the cost of living, the British Government imported more cattle from South America than ever before.

It puzzles me how the Minister and his officials do not know all of what I have been saying. Anybody who reads the paper and studies the shipping reports of stock imported into Britain will see that the prices for our cattle are reduced every time foreign beef is imported into Britain. Furthermore, there has been a complete changeover from livestock to frozen meat which is a new idea over the past few years. It has rapidly been expanded in other countries. More meat from Common-wealth countries such as Australia and New Zealand is now being imported into Britain just the same as from South America.

The Minister should have gone one stage further and given an indication in this House as to what the future is for the livestock industry. I think every Deputy across the way who knows anything about farming will agree with me that this country depends on the livestock industry. It is absolutely essential that our livestock industry should be maintained. Anyone reading the Minister's speech on agriculture would not be encouraged to stay in livestock. Would he not gather the impression that the bottom has gone out of the market? "I do not know why," the Minister says, "the bottom has gone out of the market." What will they do about it? There is no indication.

The Minister says he believes the outlook for the market for beef and for the sale of livestock is good. He does not give us any indication as to why he believes it is good. He simply admits that the bottom is going out of our market and he does not know the reason for it. The Government must have up-to-date facts on what is happening. They must know the trends of production; they must know the market and the population; they must be aware of changing Governments in the world as a whole. There are innumerable emergent Governments with a purchasing power of their own as Deputy Gibbons mentioned.

Has any attempt been made to slaughter more and to sell more in the countries that are prepared to buy frozen and dressed meat? I have no indication from the Minister's speech. I have no indication from the Parliamentary Questions I or anybody asked in this House that such is the case. We have a limited amount of information in the Minister's statement to the effect that we are exporting a little more to Italy and to the Continent. We are exporting £8,750,000 worth of stock to the combined EFTA and EEC groups. We are exporting £8 million worth of beef to the United States and we are exporting to Britain. Obviously we are exporting less to Britain. We are falling away there. Therefore, that is the danger signal the Minister and his advisers should have seen. They should see that if we cannot continue to export as much as we exported to Britain heretofore, we must increase our exports elsewhere.

I gather from the Minister's speech that he has great hopes that he will increase exports of meat to the United States. The F.A.O. reports are the most reliable reports relating to the food situation in the world. It is part of the United Nations Organisation. It covers the whole world. The most recent and up-to-date F.A.O. reports state emphatically that the United States will be self-sufficient in meat inside two years. So much for the £8 million worth of exports there and the increase which as I infer from the Minister's speech, he is looking forward to.

Deputy Gibbons mentioned the Common Market area and the opportunity to export there. The Common Market area are five per cent. short of their full requirements of beef. Five per cent, of an economic unit of approximately 175 million people with perhaps the greatest purchasing power in the world today, as great as that of the United States, is a considerable opening for exports of meat. The Minister does not seem to have any particular ideas on that subject. Our rate of export to that area is going up very slowly, nothing like in proportion to the amount one would expect, with their increasing purchasing power.

That brings me to the question of South America, the F.A.O. reports and the population trends of which, I submit, the experts in the Department of Agriculture and the Minister should be fully cognisant. The population of Latin America at the present moment is somewhere in the region of 260,000,000, and it is expected that it will be around 500,000,000 at the turn of the century. It is estimated by the F.A.O. that they will not be exporting at all in approximately two years. The U.S.A. will be self-sufficient and in approximately two years Latin America will not be exporting. For that reason we should look forward to further exports of beef, but we have not had any encouragement from the Minister to increase our production. He has told us in a vague way that everything will be all right in the end.

Let us go a stage further and see where else can we sell our goods. There is, of course, an enormous potential for the export of dressed meat to the emergent countries in Africa. I have definite first-hand information from three or four sources from people living in Nigeria, about the purchasing power of Nigeria. Nigeria is one of the wealthiest countries in Africa and it has an enormous potential. The Government in Nigeria will be rich in the near future. At the present moment Nigeria has its own livestock and beef to a certain limited extent.

The livestock in Northern Nigeria has to be taken 500 miles to the coastal district where the wealth is and where the population must be fed. I have had the privilege of visiting Nigeria and anyone who knows Nigeria and has seen its cattle will know the limited amount of flesh on those cattle. When the cattle are taken 500 miles by train in a tropical climate before they are killed, there is very little meat left. What happens? They import quite a considerable quantity of meat from New Zealand. It does not seem to me from my experience of Nigeria that there are any great contacts, commercial or otherwise, between Nigeria and New Zealand, whereas there have been many contacts between Ireland and Nigeria. All those emergent countries have knowledge of Ireland. We have had contacts with them. We have had opportunities of sending exports to them. I should like the Minister when replying to give us some idea of what, if anything, has been done about that.

You cannot export more produce without a market. One is complementary to the other. Again, quoting from the F.A.O., there is an enormous potential for the export of milk and processed milk products such as dried milk, cheese and so on, to all those different parts of the world. There is also an enormous potential in Asia, which is very short of food, for the cheaper type of protein such as processed milk.

All those things indicate that although at the present moment there may be certain difficulties there will be a heavy rush and demand for food in the very near future. We should be prepared for that time. Have we increased our stock? Has the rate of agricultural production gone up in the proper proportion? Has not every other non-agricultural country raised its production more than we have? We have been prepared to amble along from day to day. I say without fear of contradiction that this Government have no agricultural policy except to live from day to day and to expand our exports on the British market. All the facts now show that Britain is not purchasing what she purchased before.

That brings me to the Common Market. We are told by the Government—which seem to have woken up to the fact yesterday that there is such a thing as a Common Market—that if Britain goes in we go in too. There is bound to be a common agricultural policy in Europe. The statement I have read proves that there will be a common agricultural policy, if there is to be unity in Europe at all, and that more agricultural produce will be used in Europe vis-á-vis imports from the rest of the world. Those are all reasons why we should have been expanding and increasing agricultural production.

Every practical farmer knows that you cannot go on increasing agricultural production if you cannot sell it. That is where I charge the Government with inefficiency. With the changing situation and the changing pattern they should have done something, but they did nothing. They just talked about selling more on the British market.

Deputy Gibbons referred to creameries. The creameries of this country are just storing up butter. I know that there is one of the biggest creameries in the country in Deputy Gibbon's county. That creamery is literally storing butter that will be subsidised. Is it not time that we had a little rational thinking here? That butter will not be sold on a free market or at a profit, but it will be subsidised, and the subsidy will be taken out of the pockets of the Irish farmers and the Irish taxpayers as a whole. There is no policy there.

In a modern changing world, with a complete revolution in agriculture, with a complete change in regard to employment, the mechanisation of farms, the different products that are wanted in the different markets in the different parts of the world, we cannot go on with the same old methods, day after day without falling into grief. People leave rural Ireland because they have not got a chance. In my county of Wexford — which is not by any means one of the poorer counties; it is a tillage and agricultural county —there was prosperity a few years ago, and two or three sons could stay on the farm and work. One might go out for hire with a machine. What happens now? Two may go away and one stays at home. There is a living only for one where there was a living for two or three before. If a Fianna Fáil Deputy gets up after me and denies that, I shall be interested to hear what he has to say.

I am not competent really to speak about the West because I do not live there, but I know there is now the most disastrous emigration from the West in the history of this country since the Famine. That is due not only to the fact that the markets have gone, but to the fact that the Government rely entirely on the old markets which are gradually disappearing. Because they did not make any effort to change those conditions that unhappy state of affairs exists today.

I do not know what is going to happen in London. I do not know what discussions are going on in London but I do know this: if we were in Government, I am absolutely certain that one of our Ministers who would have gone to London to sit in on these discussions would have been the Minister for Agriculture, whoever he would be. What consolation is it to anyone who is actively concerned in agriculture to know that vital negotiations are going on and there is no one there to represent the agricultural point of view? We do not even know from the Minister's statement if agricultural advisers have gone with the deputation. We have one agricultural representative in our embassy in London who probably has quite enough work to do already without acting as an economic or specialist adviser in matters of agriculture on this occasion. I hope when the Minister replies he will give us some indication of what the future policy is.

I congratulated Deputy Gibbons on his speech and the fact that he appeared to have a mind of his own. The Minister replied that that is what the Fianna Fáil Party had. It is not true. Most of them have a one-track mind. That is why agriculture has been allowed to get into such a mess. However, Deputy Gibbons indicated the utter failure of Fianna Fáil policy. For years I have listened in this House to Deputies advocating that we should grow more wheat. Thousands and thousands of pounds were spent on the campaign. We heard the cry that the old Cumann na nGaedheal Government, as they then were, and their successors, Fine Gael, were swept away because we were grass ranchers, and because there was a new policy to keep people on the land by tillage. Is what Deputy Gibbons said tonight not an admission of the fact that if it were ever true that the grass ranchers were swept away they have only been swept away to be replaced by wheat ranchers?

I agree wholeheartedly with the Deputy that we should concentrate on the production of feeding stuffs. You cannot interest farmers in such production when they get 37/- a barrel for feeding barley, which, again to quote a Fianna Fáil Deputy, Deputy Corry, who read out a list this evening, is the lowest price in Europe. The costs of production for farmers are going up the same as for anybody else. I hope that in the short time I have been on my feet I have convinced the House that our aim and object ought to be to produce more livestock. We cannot produce livestock without feeding stuffs and we will not get feeding stuffs unless the farmers are given a reasonable price for producing them.

Deputy Gibbons referred to the £2 a barrel for feeding barley. If my recollection serves me right, when the inter-Party Government went out of office, we were getting £2 a barrel for feeding barely. I was selling it myself at that price. We are now getting 3/-less. Are the costs of production the same since then? Has the cost of everything not gone up? Has the cost of labour not gone up, as it is only right it should go up in order to meet the cost of living? That is one thing the Government should remember. However, very little can be done now because their time in office is getting so short that they will just be able to wind up their affairs and get out decently in the near future.

One other point to which I should like to refer is land reclamation. Land reclamation is valuable to this country and I consider it has been sabotaged to a considerable extent by this Government. They abolished section B of the scheme which was very useful to the community as a whole. The contractors who do the work have complained to me that the grants in respect of land reclamation are not big enough. There again we come down to the fact that when the present figure was fixed some years back, the cost of the work was considerably less. Labour cost less; machinery, fuel, and so on cost less. It is a matter to which the Minister and his advisers should give serious consideration.

If there is any hope of expansion in our economy, we must go ahead with land reclamation and put every acre we can into full production. In Wexford, many people would go ahead with the work, first, if they could get sanction from the Department and, secondly, having got sanction from the Department if they could get the contractors willing to the work. Contractors have told me that in many places they are losing money on the job now. This whole matter should be reviewed if there is to be meaning in land reclamation and if the Government wish to continue it.

I have listened on many occasions here to feeble efforts by the Opposition Parties to criticise this Estimate. The speeches we have heard since this Estimate was introduced are as weak as ever. I do not believe they did not get sufficient material on which to open up their guns. This is a subject on which they are very vocal, and at a time when they expect to be facing a general election, the Minister for Agriculture is the target for everybody. They have not availed of that very much and I think it is because they are satisfied that he has done a reasonably good job.

Deputy Esmonde is very worried because the Minister for Agriculture has not gone across to England with the other Ministers. I can easily understand Deputy Esmonde's worries in that connection because Deputy Esmonde saw a couple of Governments in power here constituted of this Party, and other Parties in Opposition, none of whose Ministers knew how any of the other Ministers' Departments were being run. They cannot understand, when there is a one-Party Government as we have to-day, where all the Ministers sit down and discuss the various problems concerning their different Departments, how it is that every Minister is able to speak for the other Ministers' Departments as well as his own. I have no doubt that all the members of the delegation who have gone across will be able to speak for every Department.

In case anyone is worried about having somebody to discuss agricultural policy, I do not think there is any man in the Cabinet who has a more through knowledge of agriculture than the Minister for Finance. He is one of the men who steered this country through a very difficult period when Irish farmers had their backs to the wall. I do not think they got very much assistance from the type of criticism that was levelled at the time by the people who now occupy the Opposition benches.

Deputy Esmonde told us that livestock prices had fallen, that the British had found other markets in which they could buy livestock cheaper than they can buy here, and that helped to depress prices here. Could Deputy Esmonde, or any other Deputy, the Minister, or the Government, dictate to the British Government, or any other Government, and tell them they should not buy from a country just because something is cheaper there? I do not think that could be done.

Deputy Lynch is usually very vocal, but I never knew him so stuck for words as he was during the course of his speech on this Estimate. The Minister gave an opportunity for the fullest possible discussion. In his opening remarks, he said the total net Estimate for 1961/62 was £16,145,160, representing an increase of £3,984,360 over the figure for 1960-1961. I did not hear any criticism that that represented foolish expenditure. No effort was made to show that things had been done which ought not to have been done. That is not the type of criticism we had.

Further, the Minister told us that estimation for 1960-1961 was not sufficient and he had to bring in a Supplementary Estimate for £4,647,360 in order to make further progress in the field of agriculture. We were not told that that was money foolishly spent. I do not think any of it was spent foolishly; I think it was spent wisely and well. A great many criticisms levelled across the floor of this House are not helpful to the country. There has been a great deal of talk about the flight from the land. With the advent of machinery, employment on the land has decreased. That does not mean that we have not been producing more from the soil. We have. Increased production has been brought about mainly because of this Government's policy. Production has increased considerably in the West of Ireland.

We were criticised this evening because of the fact that we have not been growing our quota of beet in the West of Ireland, despite the fact that we get a preference over other areas. I do not think that those who spoke after that fashion know the first thing about the position. I can speak for Galway. We rank third highest in beet production. Other counties may have fallen a little. We have a reasonably high quota for beet this year though it is not up to the maximum of what we grew in other years. There is a definite trend towards advance, due, in the main, to the subsidy given on artificial manures. That subsidy is very welcome. It is very helpful to the small farmer in the West of Ireland, despite the statement made here that small farmers do not get much benefit from it. If the small farmer cannot pay cash, he can always grow an acre of corn and arrange for the sale of that at a later date to cover the cost of his manures. That is the system we have. Interest is very rarely charged on manures supplied on that basis.

The Minister pointed out that the increase in his Estimate is due mainly to the bovine tuberculosis eradication scheme, the lime and fertiliser subsidy, the marketing of dairy produce, improvement of farm buildings, water supply schemes, the Land Project, losses on the disposal of wheat, and a number of other items. Again, I did not hear any criticisms levelled against anything done in relation to any of the categories I have mentioned. Progress has been made in the eradication of bovine tuberculosis. Where there was co-operation, areas were cleared rapidly. It is lack of co-operation that has prevented any advance being made in other counties.

The lime and fertiliser subsidy is very welcome in the West and very beneficial to the small farmer. Production is increasing every year. Land reclamation and drainage are going ahead. It is unfortunate that some in other areas have not seen fit to avail of these schemes. Advances have been made in farm buildings. The 50 per cent. increase given this year is very welcome. Small farmers in the West are erecting new cow byres and improving farm buildings generally.

An effort was made in my county to start a creamery. For 18 months, or two years, no progress was made. Ultimately, I discovered that the lack of progress was due to the fact that while people were interested in having a creamery or separating station in their own particular areas, they were not prepared to co-operate to have a creamery established, with one or two separating stations attached, in some other area. A few months ago, I discussed the matter with the Minister. I told him it was time to stop all the fiddling and I suggested that the matter should be put in the hands of the Dairy Disposals Board. I am glad to say considerable progress has been made already. The Dairy Disposals Board are having a survey made. I welcome the advent of the Board because I know they will do the job in the right way. I hope that we shall secure the support and co-operation of the N.F.A. and all the other agricultural organisations in our county. I hope that it will be brought to a successful conclusion in the near future. If it does, I believe that it will be one of the greatest helps to the West of Ireland outside the beet industry. Pig production is at a low ebb in our county as we have not got the skim milk necessary.

I should like to compliment General Costello and the Sugar Company on the new potato plant erected in Tuam. That is going to be one of the biggest things we have in the West. In our county, potato growing under contract is nothing new to the farmers. They have been in the potato business for many years and have been growing potatoes under contract for seed for export for a considerable time. They got rather short notice this time as the whole thing was thought out late in the Spring but the Sugar Company got all they wanted this year and it will be much better next year.

My intervention in this debate is intended to be very brief indeed. In contrast to the last speaker, who gave a good deal of his time to criticising two speakers from this side of the House, I wish to join with Deputy Esmonde in complimenting Deputy Gibbons on his intelligent, impartial and non-political contribution to the debate. I want also to join in paying a compliment to my colleague in Fianna Fáil from East Cork, Deputy Moher, on his intelligent contribution to the debate. I am sorry that I cannot go the whole way and pay a tribute to my other Fianna Fáil colleague, Deputy Corry. I shall make reference to him later.

In this House we will all agree that our major and most important industry is agriculture but, listening to the debate and having read the Minister's speech, I notice no reference to what in my opinion is the most important part of that industry, our most important crop which is grass. There are 12,000,000 acres of land in Ireland, 85 per cent. of which is under grass and, therefore, it follows that grass is our most important crop. It is only right and proper that we should give great attention to it.

It is from the finished products of that raw material that most of our national income comes. Therefore, we must make efficient use of our grassland to ensure that agriculture and every other industry is brought to its full productivity. Figures I have seen recently convinced me that we are not treating this crop, which must be treated as a crop, with the proper methods of husbandry. It is a startling and revealing fact that the Dutch use seven times, the Danes use five times and the English use four times more fertilisers than we do. I want to impress on the Minister that until we come to realise that the liming of our land followed by liberal use of "supers" and potash is of high importance we are not making the best use of our millions of acres of grass. Our experiments have proved conclusively that we are sadly lacking in the use of fertilisers. Having said that, the average farmer will say in reply "What is the use of treating our lands to that extent then the more we produce the less we get?" That brings me to the next problem in dealing with which I again believe that we are sadly lacking in effort. We have no proper marketing system for our produce. The potential market of the Continent has not yet been fully realised. I have heard people here talk about the Common Market. At this stage may I say that everyone of us wishes the Taoiseach and the two Minister's with him the best of luck in their negotiations in London, but at the same time I want to say that, if the problem of the Common Market never had arisen, the potential market on the Continent for our produce has never been exploited or realised.

The British market is still an important outlet for our agricultural produce, in my opinion, Britain has now become a dumping ground for the agricultural produce of the world. When I read the Minister's speech and saw his opinion was that there was a certain amount of mystery surrounding the bad price for cattle, I thought it was obvious that the heavy shipments from the Argentine have an impact on our Irish affairs. I agree with my colleague, Deputy Esmonde, that it appears that the Minister and his Department have made no real study of this problem. Whether or not the Common Market comes into existence, we must still study our marketing problems and this is a question that must have the attention of the Minister and his Department.

It has been agreed that no proper effort has been made to market our agricultural produce in a proper or attractive form. Recently I read an article in the Farmer and Stockbreeder from which it appeared that the New Zealand Board of Meat Producers did a very effective job on T.V. by demonstrating to Japanese housewives how to treat New Zealand lamb. A sum of £250,000 was voted by this House to a Marketing Board. We are all sadly disappointed with the results. In fact, a great deal of that money is still unexpended. If we are to make real progress in agriculture, whether in or out of the Common Market, it is quite obvious that we must have a market for that produce. While we produce more and encourage farmers to produce more and pay scientists to help them to produce more, we lack a real market for the produce. The Minister and his Department should make a real effort to get markets, not only in Europe but in the other continents.

I have mentioned the efforts of New Zealand to sell lamb on the Japanese market. They succeeded in a big way, according to the article to which I have referred. We could learn from their experience. Even if we are a proud nation, other countries have learned something from us and we should learn something from them.

I mentioned at the outset that I could not help making reference by name to members of the House, much as I dislike it. It is only right that I should mention Deputy Corry, who spoke here this evening and who has spoken in practically every debate in this House over the last two years and who criticised people.

I agree entirely with Deputy Gibbons that wheat is a problem. I have never heard anyone in this House putting the problem so clearly as he did this evening with regard to screening. I noticed that the Minister listened to him attentively. I do hope that the Minister will study what Deputy Gibbons said because the same problem is agitating my mind.

With regard to the price of wheat, I remember listening to Deputy Corry, before the last General Election in 1957, in the town of Killeagh. He was appealing to the people there to vote for Fianna Fáil. He guaranteed that if Fianna Fáil were returned to office the price of wheat would be increased by £1 per barrel. I heard him myself and it was also reported in the Press the following day. In Deputy Gibbons' constituency, on the occasion of a by-election for Carlow-Kilkenny, in the town of Mullinavat, he assured the farmers that if the Fianna Fáil candidate were returned to power the price of wheat would be increased by £1 a barrel.

I am speaking now for the farmers of East Cork. I want to express their disillusionment and disappointment. Instead of the price of wheat being increased by £1 a barrel, under a Fianna Fáil Government the price of wheat was drastically reduced and there is still a levy of 4/6d. a barrel on it. Deputy Gibbons did say that it was no cost to the taxpayer. That, of course, is true but it is a big cost to the wheat-grower and the farmer who is trying to make a living out of grain just now.

Any farmer, whether big or small, trying to make a living on the growing of grain, whether it be wheat, barley or oats, is taking on a difficult task. When all the outgoings at ever-increasing rates are taken into account, with ever-increasing costs of production, with the deductions in the form of screening, levy and otherwise, it is impossible for any farmer to make a profit on wheat.

Reference has been made to the price of barley. At £2 a barrel there is certainly not much fat in it. A grower would need to have luck and the weather on his side to ensure that he would not lose at the present price.

Deputy Gibbons blamed a fungus disease for loss incurred in growing wheat. At least, Deputy Gibbons made an attempt to explain it fairly. It is not the kind of explanation we would expect from Deputy Corry but then, of course, East Cork and Kilkenny are different.

Deputy Moher is inclined to believe that there is little future for the small farmer in this country. It is rather difficult to disagree with that view. Deputy Moher does not desire that position any more than anybody in this House. I agree that it is very difficult for small farmers under their present system of farming, namely, store cattle and fattening of pigs, to make ends meet or to make any kind of living but I see something of a future for them in the type of project which General Costello is establishing in Mallow—to deep-freeze vegetable products. I want to impress on the Minister that if there is any hope for the small farmer or for family labour on small farms it is in such projects.

I know the experiment in Cork is only in the initial stage but I have no doubt of its future success. The Minister and his Department should address themselves to the possibility of establishing such projects, especially in the West of Ireland. If small farmers are to survive, if there is to be any family labour or any employment content on small farms, we must forget the old traditional style of farming, namely, store cattle and the fattening of pigs, because there is not enough money in that business to keep small farmers going. We must get down to specialised farming and horticulture.

I am pleading with the Minister to examine that possibility, especially in the West of Ireland and in West Cork as well as in East Cork. We are convinced that the operation started in Mallow under the guidance of General Costello will be a help there.

I know the Minister for Agriculture no matter who he may be, has a difficult and onerous task. Although the life of this Dáil is now in its eventide, another Dáil will replace it. Whether the Minister for Agriculture or I will be members of it or not does not matter because better men than either of us will always be found.

I doubt it.

The Minister says that jocosely but he believes what I have said. In any case, there are people able and willing to replace us. I want to say in all seriousness that, no matter who sits on that side of the House or on this side of the House after the next election—I understand it will be about the first week in October—they will have to tackle the problem of agriculture in rather a different way than those who went before them. I am not saying those who went before them did not do the job in the way the people wanted. They certainly did. Whether or not we join the Common Market, we have a problem here in regard to agriculture, the nature of which demands that we must change our ideas and be able to market our agricultural produce in a manner that will command respect not only in Europe but in the other continents as well.

Every Minister feels a sense of satisfaction when he comes to the conclusion of the discussion on his Department's annual Estimate. For a long time in this House I have listened to debates on the Estimate for the Department of Agriculture, for a longer time as a Deputy than as a Minister. As some Deputies have admitted, Agriculture is a strenuous Department, and the discussions over the years have often been strenuous, too. The Department of Agriculture is a political Department in the sense that the farmers' voice, influence and numerical strength must be taken into account by all political Parties. Therefore, it is natural to expect that we would hear a good deal at least once a year, and sometimes more, about his problem, anxieties and so on.

Naturally, I could not deal with all the matters to which Deputies referred, but I should like to deal with a few of them. The last speaker and many others devoted some time to discussing our whole grain policy—the growing of wheat, the profitability of the crop, the problem of excess wheat and the many devices that have been suggested for dealing with that problem. In some cases the contract system is recommended. We are given instances of how successful that system has been in other fields. The problems arising in a year such as last year, 1958, or any year in which the harvest was poor and the crop poor, are problems, that are easily misrepresented. It is very easy for a Deputy, a member of a county council or a member of a county committee of agriculture, to misrepresent the situation a Minister and his Department have to deal with in a year such as 1960 or 1958. I shall try to explain as best I can how that comes about.

We are now in the year 1961 and the harvest is almost upon us. The Government have given an assurance to the growers of feeding barley that they will obtain a certain minimum price for whatever barley of suitable quality they grow. The Government, having given that guarantee have to take some steps to ensure it will be fully implemented. The price Deputies have correctly quoted is not by any means a generous one. I could deal with that part of the charge fairly effectively. However, I shall confine myself at this stage to saying that in the circumstances, and having regard to the fact that barley is a feed crop for animals, in the very nature of things the price cannot be a generous one. At this part of the year, or perhaps a little earlier, it is the duty of a Minister for Agriculture to ask himself how he can give effect to this guarantee tendered to the barley growers in the name of the Government.

We had here for some years, when I came to the Department, a semi-State body called Grain Importers. They were the people who were called upon to implement this guarantee. At that time the price would have been around £2 per barrel. The way in which they implemented that guarantee was to authorise the dealers, or the handlers of grain, to buy barley of a suitable quality at the fixed floor price, to dry it and store it, and to have it disposed of to compounders over the remainder of the year and into the next harvest. I found myself having Parliamentary Questions addressed to me by Deputies on the other side and also on my own side, as to the price, say, in the month of April at which this barley purchased at £20 a ton was available for the purpose of conversion into feeding stuffs. I remember replying to a Parliamentary Question, asked I think by Deputy Corry, some time in the month of April. At that time, with all the different costs arising from the handling of the barley crop in that way, the price was then about £28 per ton.

I know there are costs that are there and which can be explained. There are costs that cannot be denied but it is tremendously difficult to explain to those people who are using that barley as feeding for their animals how the differential should be so great as between the harvest and the following spring. Personally, I attributed quite a substantial portion of that differential to the fact that when you had a crop like that being handled by an organisation such as Grain Importers, which was relying upon these other agencies to handle the crop for them, they were to be charged for every time a human being blew his breath on that grain. They were going to have drying charges, storing charges, handling charges, interest charges, rates and rent. Everything was going to be charged to a semi-State body in a fairly generous way, which was a natural thing for the private citizen to do. The result, as I say, was that the barley price in the springtime had reached a level that nobody could understand, certainly not the people who would have to pay for it and use it in the manner I have described.

I was anxious to bring that situation to an end. I felt that if we could have an arrangement whereby private enterprise would handle this question of the purchase of whatever barley would be offered after the harvest then the Government's commitments to the growers would be at an end and the Department and myself would be relieved of a most cumbersome licensing system, the most objectionable licensing system that anyone could think of, a licensing system which as far as offal and other feeding stuffs was concerned, was being handled by us who were not in a position to know from day to day whether or not the case that was being made for licences by compounders, for pollard or whatever it might be, was in fact justifiable at all.

I took the view, and I still hold the view, that if we had a guarantee, as we have a guarantee, and if it was to be the policy of the day — and both Goverments have had it as their policy to give guaranteed prices for feeding barley—that from the point of view of the feeder it is better that we should ask the trade who handle that barley to purchase it at the guaranteed minimum price and then leave them free to import whatever other feeding stuffs they require whenever in their judgment the time was suitable to make these purchases and then give them the greatest possible degree of freedom in handling that trade. I have no hesitation at all in saying that that policy has resulted in making available cheaper compounds and feeding stuffs in general.

Now we come to a different situation. As I said, you just cannot wait until the harvest is in the haggard to make your plans in that regard. Plans must be made in advance and so it is that, in the Department's case, we have already adopted the scheme for the purchase of barley that is offered for sale that was in operation here last year. The barley will be purchased at the guaranteed price and after it is paid for, stored and dried, the compounders will take it on the 31st December this year at a price of £23 per ton. As I say, that arrangement has now been made for 1961.

Any more than I could say in 1960, I cannot say on the 18th July, 1961, that this harvest is going to be a good one, apart altogether from yields. I cannot say that the harvest of 1961 is going to be a good one. There was not any real evidence this time last year that 1960 would turn out as it did. There is no evidence on which I could rely that 1961 will be better. I can hope it will and everybody else does too. The fact remains, however, that if it did by the grace of God prove to be a harvest like that of 1960, I take it the Government would have to intervene as they did in 1960 and in 1958 to protect the growers of wheat, although the wheat so purchased and the growers so protected might not have a commodity that would be capable of being used in the grist to the extent that it could be in a good year.

It is all right for Deputies to talk about the injustice of the levy system. I never made any claim that I had any particular regard for it. Indeed, I felt myself in the same boat as the fellow who got married, the fellow who could not speak very well, and who at the wedding breakfast, was asked to say a few words. He got all nervous and excited and finally said: "This thing was forced on me."

I could really say the same thing about this levy scheme. Whatever its merits or demerits, may be — it might be all right in a good year like 1959— it does not meet the situation which arises in a year such as 1958 or 1960, when only a comparatively small percentage of the wheat crop was of the quality that enabled it to be used in the grist. The problem then arises of disposing of that surplus wheat, most of which was unsuitable for conversion into flour. Here is a point on which it is easy to misrepresent the Minister for Agriculture. He has already given this barley guarantee. He has already asked the commercial interests concerned to purchase it on the basis of a guaranteed price and of taking it over from the merchants on 31st December at £23 a ton.

Would the Minister for Agriculture be keeping his word to such interests if he were then to take 250,000 tons of unmillable wheat and start flogging it all round in the market at all and any kind of price? A Minister for Agriculture would be naturally entitled to assume that every harvest would not be a disastrous one. A Minister for Agriculture must be optimistic about the mercy of the Almighty in sending us good seasons as well as bad ones and, when the bad one strikes, would he be entitled to use the result of a bad harvest in the wheat field for the purpose of lashing surplus wheat around at any price, though the commercial interests had a tacit understanding that they would not be so hit in such eventualities?

The only way in which in fact he could, in all fairness and justice, dispose of that wheat is to take back the barley these people had purchased at the price mentioned and compensate them fully and sell barley and wheat at the same price. In dealing with this, I am leaving the past behind me because in going into the next harvest, the unmillable wheat will have been disposed of and we will have no problems in this regard. But we have the to make our arrangements as described then. Personally I should like to dispose of that crop at the same price, even if it cost the Exchequer a little more. That would not be a determining factor, if it were not for the other complications and we cannot have a grain policy based upon the belief that we are going to have a disastrous harvest every year.

Sometimes, when I hear Deputies talking about the low price for barley and all this, I honestly ask myself, when I see all the complications that arise from this guaranteed minimum price for barley, is it all worth it? The price you give cannot be very attractive. Even as it is, I receive a tremendous number of complaints about the effect it has on poultry keepers and pig feeders. All these complications shake me in my belief as to the wisdom of all this. Let us take last season when we grew about 300,000 tons of feeding barley. Only half of that was marketed, which proves that the farmers who grew the other half kept it themselves and used it on their own farms, which, of course, is the ideal thing.

But here we are dealing with half of last year's barley crop — 150,000 tons—committed up to the hilt in the way I have described, and as a result of the disastrous harvest, we had also to dispose of 240,000 tons of native wheat which was not suitable for conversion into flour. The complications that arise from that guarantee for such a small quantity of barley — only half of the crop grown—makes me wonder if it is worth it. I am glad to see that there is a tendency to grow more feeding barley, but at the same time, we get so many bad harvests that we run into the sort of difficulties I have tried to describe reasonably adequately. This arrangment to which I have referred for the handling of barley has been made again this year. It can be made only on the understanding that, when that crop is taken up promptly and without any "hems" or "haws," those engaged in that trade will be free to import what they feel is required, what they feel there will be a demand for and they will be free to use their own judgment at to the time when they should make these purchases and effect these imports.

Some references were made to the oats crop of last year. I think Deputy Tierney, from my replies to Parliamentary Questions, seemed to think that I had given an assurance that I intended to stand firm and not allow any imports of oats. I have not the replies before me but I know very well that was not what I said on any occasion. On any occasion on which a question was addressed to me, I said that it was my intention to stand firm until such time as I was satisfied that it was necessary to give a licence to import oats. I was satisfied that it was necessary when I did give them and I am satisfied that I was right. In fact, I made it my business to encourage other interests to make an on-the-spot investigation in all areas in which oats were growing as a cash crop. They satisfied themselves and me completely that much of the howling that went on as to the availability of suitable oats was entirely unjustified.

Deputy Tierney mentioned that the acreage in respect of the oats crop is going down. So it is. That is an understandable thing. Look at the amount of oats consumed here some years ago by feeding horses, working horses of all kinds in the country, towns and cities. Think of the amount of oatmeal consumed even by human beings and see the changes that have taken place in these two lines. Some people in this case referred to the fact that these interests should be refused licences and be compelled, as a result, to enter into contracts with growers to have their requirements provided for them here at home. The people who make these suggestions are quite conscious of the fact that many of these contracts, when entered into, are difficult to implement. With regard to the contract price mentioned in the agreement, if it should transpire, when the harvest is finished and when the corn is threshed, that there are more attractive openings for the sale of oats in other places, those who made the contract on the other side would find themselves without their requirements. I do not think any Minister in a case of this kind, would quickly agree to permit the importation of oats into this country, especially in the setting I have mentioned—that is a falling acreage and a reduced demand but at the same time when you see what is there, when you see the quality of it and when you compare it with oats that would be of a reasonably good quality, even without being an expert, it is not hard to conclude—it was not difficult to conclude last year — that that course of action was entirely justified.

I made reference in the course of my opening statement to the mystery of the cattle trade. While in that opening statement I gave expression to my fears and suspicions, I have not found any proof that there is any manipulation, through the marketing of beef and beef cattle, on the other side. However, I am naturally suspicious where a price support system exists here at home, whether it is in the form of a subsidy or in whatever form it is given by any Government, as to whether it is reaching the destination that those who designed it, intended it should.

I was asked a Parliamentary Question on this matter and I asked many people to provide all the information that was obtainable as to the supplies of beef on the British market over a recent period. I have met people who were in the trade and they talked to me as if the British market at the time were swamped with outside imports. They gave me to understand that this was the main reason for the tremendous depression that took place, as I said in reply to the Parliamentary Question, at a time when no man or no person in the trade would have ever suspected it could have arisen. In fact, all the judgments and all the judges would have thought at the time this depression set in that prices would tend to rise rather than fall.

When the information was supplied to me, I admit there was a heavier killing of cattle in Britain because of the early grass season. There was, perhaps, some slight evidence that imports were a little higher from outside. There was, as I said, the contention that the people were turning towards broiler chickens. There was also the contention that the weather was warm and so on. Honestly, adding up all these things, I could scarcely account for this tremendous fall in prices and I talked to people who should know and who were suspicious like myself. One is entitled to have suspicion but it is a difficult thing and a different thing to provide the proof but here is the way I looked at it.

The British farmer was guaranteed a certain price. He was going to get that. In fact, he has received by way of subsidy as much as half the value of each animal. He had not very much to worry about in that regard. The British farmer could easily say to himself, too, that if the price of beef on the open market was low it would affect the price of store cattle adversely. If he was interested, as he would be, he could put in his replacements at lower levels as far as price was concerned. The consumer, I concluded, was not going to suffer either, because he would get cheaper meat, or he ought to.

The retailers could have no adverse criticism to offer because of that situation nor the wholesaler. To tell the truth, I just threw all these considerations together and, as a result of discussions I had with people who are fairly knowledgeable, I simply concluded that there might be something there. There might be some manipulation through the marketing system there that had this depressing effect. It is not easy to establish these things. In fact, it is often impossible to establish them. But, anyhow, I had these suspicions and I gave expression to them and I am giving expression to them again as clearly as I can.

I suppose it was appropriate to a discussion on the Estimate for the Department of Agriculture to talk about movement from the land and, coupled with that, the purchase of land by foreigners. I have heard and read a fair share on this subject of movement from the land. I, like many Deputies here, know a fair share about rural parts. Some Deputies from the West of Ireland would attempt to give the impression that there were no such things as smallholdings anywhere except in the West of Ireland. There are plenty of them in Donegal, plenty of them in Monaghan and thousands of them in Cavan.

And Meath.

And Meath. That is right, all along my border; smallholdings and as poor a land as you would get anywhere on some of them though not very much of it.

Just as much as any Deputy here, I could truthfully say that I certainly regret the tendency that has been there now for quite a long time. I have not much patience, though, with some people who address themselves to this problem. In many cases they are people who have not had much association with land or with landowners. Neither have their families. In some cases they are people who, although they may have been raised on these small farming areas, made sure not to stay there. On leaving, they made sure, if they were able financially, that they brought those belonging to them who were there out of it.

It is not often that I attend but an odd time I attend meetings of one kind or another where this subject is under discussion. I often boil over with rage because I do not believe that half of what is said is said either truthfully or honestly. If those of us who, I think, know this problem fairly well attempt to reason it we are accused of making excuses for it. If we talk about it as a world tendency, as it is, we are reminded that it is no business of ours to make that kind of case at all.

Deputy Moher made certain observations. Some Deputies here tried to speak scathingly about some comment he made on this subject. We must be realistic about this. It is the duty of a Government and, as a member of the Government, I would accept my share of that as wholeheartedly as the circumstances would permit, to try to stem that tendency by every means they can because none of us want to see the countryside denuded. Even if we were to retain and increase our total population, apart altogether from a movement from the land, I would not still be satisfied if I could stop them. We must be realists about this.

I live in County Cavan. I live fairly near the Monaghan border, represented by the Leader of the Opposition. It is not very long since I happened to be in a part of North Monaghan where the land is tremendously heavy and wet. I was walking across this land and I was just asking myself, as I viewed the scene around me, what were the prospects of inducing people in the future to come into that part of Ireland, to recondition some of the homes there that were once occupied by families and to live there? I could not help thinking, as I walked across those parts of the country, of those who lecture us at every corner about the means that could be adopted to stem that tendency, and to induce people to stay in those parts.

Similar districts exist in my own county. There is heavy, wet, sticky land. Strange to say, few people now want to use a horse, but without a horse, I cannot see those lands being used, tilled and conditioned as they used to be. Apart altogether from making this a political issue as some people would make it, any individual who is thoughtful and who knows those parts—and they are in every county— can see that in this age, and in these times, with the attractions there are in other spheres and other ways of life, it is very hard to know what effective steps could be taken to curb that decline.

I admit that many small landowners can live reasonably well. By a small landowner, I mean the man who can live reasonably because of his own enthusiasm and devotion to his work. He will try everything, including plenty of hard work. We can still see the man and his family who can do a successful job in a fairly small acreage, but there are many in occupation of land who will not take that stand. They are not so devoted, and they do not seem to think that any effort is called for from them. They take the easy line. I suppose there is not anything I can say that will stem the amount of talk on this subject. It is no harm that those who talk so much and so loudly about it should have it conveyed to them that there are many who read and listen and who do not believe there is the slightest degree of honesty in what is being said.

The purchase of land by foreigners is not really a responsibility of mine. If that were a problem, it would naturally be handled by another Minister and another Department, but I should like to give my opinion on that problem, if it can justifiably be called a problem. Throwing my mind back over the past 20 years, this sort of thing seems to arise periodically. Someone starts a hare. In 1947, the very same hare was started: foreigners were coming in and purchasing land while many of our own people had to live on uneconomic holdings. That campaign was dishonest in 1947, and it is equally dishonest now, in my view. I know a few holdings that were purchased in my county and I would say it was a godsend that someone came in and purchased them. I do not know one man in my county, who would be inclined to live on the land, who would give a "bob" for most of their holdings. Many of them are heavily wooded, scrubby, dirty land, with huge houses in poor condition, carrying tremendous valuations. They have been there for years and years for anyone to buy and no purchaser could be found, not even the Land Commission.

Is it not the experience of any Deputy who is old enough to remember—I know it is mine—that where a foreigner, if you like to use that term, came in and made such a purchase, in 99 cases out of 100, he spent thousands of pounds on the purchase, and hundreds of pounds on effecting improvements? After nine or ten years, he sold out without realising one quarter of what he had originally paid and subsequently spent on the operation.

We hear a lot of talk about the amount of arable land we have but, travelling to Cork, Galway or Belfast, if we look at the countryside, we can see a lot of land which is neglected by our farmers. There may be an explanation in some cases, perhaps a family explanation or some other extenuating circumstances. It is now put forward as a serious proposition that if out of the 12,000,000 acres of arable land which we are supposed to have, a few thousand acres over a period of eight, nine or ten years are purchased by foreigners—who, as I have said, spend plenty of money on them—it will bring the Irish race to disaster. Those people give employment. Sometimes an odd one can show us how to do something that we may not be able to do as well, and perhaps in other cases we know how to do other things far better than they do. Perhaps they become interested in further business ventures here and to that extent, also help the part of the country in which they reside. I regret to think that this matter should be used for political and propagandist purposes as it has been. Deputy Blowick, in speaking about this meeting held down in Mayo on Sunday last, said that some of the people who attended there from North Mayo had given expression to a different point of view altogether and seemed to think it was wrong that a hostile attitude should be adopted towards a limited amount of development. Whatever remarks these gentlemen made, I did not see them reported in any of the papers. It was only the one side of the story that appears to have appealed most to the publicity merchants.

My county has as many small farmers as any other county. I know of a few purchases that have been made in my county by outsiders and I know of a number that have been made outside the county. I do not mind saying this publicly — and I think I can say this of most places—that if foreigners or whoever they are come in and buy places such as those in my county, there is not one will receive them other than with open arms.

The subject of our advisory services is nearly always referred to on this Estimate and, since others have seen fit to repeat their opinions and beliefs, I suppose there can be no objection to a Minister doing likewise although, as I have often said before, I dislike having to do that. I thoroughly agree with the proposition that we should give to our farmers the greatest possible degree of assistance in that regard but I also believe it is a mistake to increase the number of agricultural scientists employed unless there is a constant and growing demand for their services on the part of the farmers. I often feel that the numbers already employed could give greater service than they do. It is difficult to supervise the activities of an outdoor staff whether that outdoor staff is employed by a committee of agriculture, a local authority or the State.

When I receive a complaint about negligence on the part of a member of the outdoor staff in my Department I always feel the man is guilty until he is proven innocent. The temptation to be negligent is there and the supervision cannot be of that close nature that will ensure that the performance will be up to standard. I have heard farmers complain that some of these advisory officers who are employed by county committees of agriculture were not giving the service they could give, out then it is very hard to prove these things. An agricultural scientist may be good at his job and know all about it, but if he has not the enthusiasm and the proper approach to farmers and to his work he will not produce the results.

I should like to see county committees of agriculture engaging more of such officers provided there is a demand for them and that their services are fully used. It can be demoralising if there are too many officials thrown loosely about who do not appear, as far as the man who is hard working is concerned, to be as fully occupied as those who pay him would think he ought to be. Subject to these reservations I certainly would be inclined even to ask my colleagues in the Government to help still further in encouraging the employment of more of these officers.

This year, again, Deputy Dillon asked me about the prospect of the development in Britain and I suppose here, too, of the pre-packaged trade in bacon. He mentioned the statement that was made by somebody—I forget the name—about this trade——

——and in regard to allowing the producer of pigs the completest freedom and Wall's guarantee to handle whatever is produced in a way that would be pleasing and acceptable to the consumer. It is true that strides have been made in that field in Britain but they are very small strides as yet. The amount of the market that is being catered for by pre-packaged bacon is infinitesimal in relation to the total. There are people in the trade who are still doubtful. There are some who think that a market for pre-packaged bacon will develop but there are quite a few who believe that development will not take place as rapidly as some people anticipate.

When the Government are planning for the production of a type of pig to produce bacon acceptable to the public taste at home and abroad, it is disturbing that this new idea should arise because it represents an intervention in breeding policy on the lines adopted by those who have been working on this matter in recent years. I do not believe, however, that the trade here is unconscious of that development and I am sure they will keep abreast of any further development. The issue is not absolutely clear-cut. The firm of Walls have been experimenting but the type of bacon produced does not cater for more than a very small percentage of the total trade involved.

When it comes to thinking in terms of what the Government and the Minister for Agriculture can do to promote the interest of agriculture and the prosperity of the farmers, it is, of course, the duty of the Minister and his Department to think out the lines along which assistance and encouragement can best be given. Looking at the development of agricultural policy over the years, one has to conclude that, in our circumstances and with the means available to us, the lines pursued are satisfactory on the whole. It is possible that from time to time something more can be added. Generous help is given to our farmers. There is generous provision for new outoffices, for the reconstruction of old outoffices, for the making and improving of passages to and from the farmyard, for the installation of water in the home, the outoffices and the fields.

Generous contributions are given towards any new work proposed on the land. Large sums are spent each year in that direction and the number of applicants is increasing every year. The farmer is helped in the provision of lime, phosphates and potash for his land. All these are important aids to agriculture and all these aids are aimed at improving the general standard and increasing output so that the farmer may enjoy the highest income he can command from his land, and with less expenditure on his part. I am a firm believer in thinking along sure and safe lines, lines likely to achieve the desired results. Agriculture is supported as generously as the Exchequer and the taxpayers can afford. I believe that there is an appreciation—it may be unexpressed—on the part of our agriculturists that that wise policy is being steadfastly operated by me and this Government.

Question—"That the Estimate be referred back for reconsideration"—put.
The Committee divided: Tá, 36; Níl, 53.

  • Barry, Richard.
  • Belton, Jack.
  • Burke, James.
  • Byrne, Patrick.
  • Coburn, George.
  • Corish, Brendan.
  • Cosgrave, Liam.
  • Costello, Declan D.
  • Crotty, Patrick J.
  • Desmond, Daniel.
  • Dillon, James M.
  • Esmonde, Sir Anthony C.
  • Fagan, Charles.
  • Flanagan, Oliver J.
  • Giles, Patrick.
  • Hogan, Bridget.
  • Jones, Denis F.
  • Kenny, Henry.
  • Lindsay, Patrick.
  • Lynch, Thaddeus.
  • McGilligan, Patrick.
  • McLaughlin, Joseph.
  • McMenamin, Daniel.
  • Manley, Timothy.
  • Mulcahy, Richard.
  • Murphy, William.
  • O'Donnell, Patrick.
  • O'Higgins, Michael J.
  • O'Higgins, Thomas F.
  • O'Reilly, Patrick.
  • O'Sullivan, Denis J.
  • Reynolds, Mary.
  • Rooney, Eamonn.
  • Ryan, Richie.
  • Sweetman, Gerard.
  • Tierney, Patrick.

Níl

  • Bartley, Gerald.
  • Blaney, Neil T.
  • Boland, Gerald.
  • Boland, Kevin.
  • Booth, Lionel.
  • Brady, Philip A.
  • Brady, Seán.
  • Breen, Dan.
  • Brennan, Joseph.
  • Brennan, Paudge.
  • Breslin, Cormac.
  • Briscoe, Robert.
  • Browne, Seán.
  • Burke, Patrick.
  • Carty, Michael.
  • Childers, Erskine.
  • Clohessy, Patrick.
  • Collins, James J.
  • Corry, Martin J.
  • Cotter, Edward.
  • Lynch, Jack.
  • MacCarthy, Seán.
  • McEllistrim, Thomas.
  • MacEntee, Seán.
  • Medlar, Martin.
  • Millar, Anthony G.
  • Moher, John W.
  • Crowley, Honor M.
  • Cummins, Patrick J.
  • Cunningham, Liam.
  • Davern, Mick.
  • de Valera, Vivion.
  • Doherty, Seán.
  • Egan, Kieran P.
  • Egan, Nicholas.
  • Faulkner, Padraig.
  • Geoghegan, John.
  • Gibbons, James.
  • Gilbride, Eugene.
  • Haughey, Charles.
  • Hilliard, Michael.
  • Johnston, Henry M.
  • Kenneally, William.
  • Killilea, Mark.
  • Kitt, Michael F.
  • Loughman, Frank.
  • Lynch, Celia.
  • Moran, Michael.
  • Ó Briain, Donnchadh.
  • O'Toole, James.
  • Smith, Patrick.
  • Teehan, Patrick.
  • Traynor, Oscar.
Tellers: Tá; Deputies O'Sullivan and Crotty; Níl, Deputies Ó Briain and Loughman.
Question declared lost.
Vote put and agreed to.
Progress reported; Committee to sit again.
The Dáil adjourned at 11 p.m. until 12 noon on Wednesday, 19th July, 1961.
Barr
Roinn