asked the Minister for Agriculture if in view of (a) the imminence of the Common Market and (b) the importance of keeping an adequate labour force on the land to enable the country to compete under the new conditions he will initiate a new deal for farm labourers to include improved wages and working conditions as well as a special State-subsidised pension as an inducement to rural workers to remain in agriculture.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Farm Labourers' Wages and Conditions.
84.
As the Deputy is aware, there is provision under existing legislation for the fixing of minimum rates of wages for agricultural workers and for the granting to them of annual holidays and weekly half-holidays. There has also been an improvement in working conditions. It is to be hoped that joining the Common Market would ultimately be to the advantage of all sections of the community and that, in agriculture, the gradual evolution of a better system of European markets, coupled with our own hard work and efficiency, would lead to that higher standard of living for those on the land which is one of the important objectives of the Rome Treaty.
Does the Minister not agree that it is perfectly obvious that there has been a progressive exodus of agricultural labourers from rural Ireland, principally to Britain, partly to the larger towns and to the Six Counties, due mainly to the fact that they are badly paid and have longer hours than the people in the city and in industry, and is he not also aware that they are probably the only section of the Irish population now who have no such thing as a retirement pension provided for them and that they and the farmers are the most important section of the Irish population, to whose praises we are tired listening in this House? In the light of that, surely, it is not just good enough to say that there is the Agricultural Wages Board——
The Deputy is succeeding in making a speech.
——and that if things go well in the Common Market the farm worker will benefit also. Surely something more than that is called for?