As I said, I heard many Fianna Fáil Deputies stating openly they accepted fully the verdict of the people. This is obviously not so with the Minister for Local Government. He is still whining and complaining that the people are wrong. The only person who is wrong in this country now is the Minister for Local Government. Even his own Taoiseach is wrong. The Taoiseach accepts the verdict of the people; the Minister for Local Government refuses to do so.
The Minister for Local Government proceeds from there to defend the Irish Independent against the attacks of Deputy Dunne. Surely this is novel and particularly good coming from the Minister for Local Government who has himself, in the course of the campaign, been attacking the Irish Independent and doing everything possible to intimidate them. Of course, he would see to it that those advertisements were withdrawn from the Irish Independent if he were not afraid to do it as was done in the case of the Farmers' Journal. It is certainly novel to see the Minister defending the Irish Independent against Deputy Seán Dunne. Deputy Dunne is well known for his appreciation of the high standards observed by the press in this country and of the service they render to the people. The Minister's attitude is typical of his arrogance.
He goes on then to make a personal attack on me and when he is challenged he runs out of the House. He makes a scandalous personal attack on my character but cannot produce a shred of evidence to support what he says. He talks about what I said in regard to some development or other in the Green Isle Hotel in Clondalkin and what I said he did or did not do about this development. He refused to give particulars. I could not possibly follow it up but I challenge him here and now to meet me, with the directors of this hotel, and to tell them and me what he has in mind; because anything I have in mind about the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries or the Minister for Local Government or any other Minister, I will say it to him both here and outside the House. I will not be afraid to say it because I am not a person who takes pride in annihilating people's characters as some of those opposite do. I want that challenge to be on record and I want to see the Minister outside the House because I insist I will defend my character no matter who attacks it. I want him to produce the evidence. He is completely free to do so.
He made an attack on Deputy O'Connell about the letters the Deputy writes to his constituents. I had a question on the Order Paper today to ask the Minister if it was the practice in his Department, when he accepted tenders, first to notify certain Deputies in his own constituency before notifying the county council concerned, and I was told the answer was in the negative. I was told the answer was in the negative while I hold in my possession a letter to Deputy Foley: "Dear Des, I am very pleased to be able to tell you I have today accepted the tender for such a house." This was given to Deputy Foley on the 14th and was given to the county council on the 16th.
This is his method of keeping himself in office and for keeping a Deputy in office who is well known to have done no work since he came into the House, either in the constituency or in the House. This is the way for getting a pretext for deceiving the people into believing that they have been in some way responsible for getting a house built for an unfortunate woman. This is the type of practice the Minister for Local Government indulges in when he should be doing his own work. This is the job he has his civil servants engaged in with public money. It is a disgrace and it should be exposed. Of course, there is another Fianna Fáil Deputy in the county but he is not in such favour as Deputy Foley. He may get a letter a few days after the county council have got it and "Dear Paddy" will then be late with the story. This is the form, this is what I want to expose. The Irish Independent, to which the Minister for Local Government referred, had this to say in a leading article on 5th November:
Distasteful, even humiliating, steps are required of the Government to expunge the undemocratic arrogance of which, until last month, it could be rightly accused.
If the Irish Independent wants further evidence of arrogance, it certainly got it today from the Minister for Local Government. The leading article continued:
An easier policy is required of the Opposition: to expose and relentlessly hunt down that arrogance should it show itself again.
I say that, in fact, it has shown itself on a number of occasions inside the last week and I have been thinking about this problem just as the Irish Independent has been. The arrogant people, the people who refuse to talk to people in the country, who refuse to consult the various vocational groups and who ignore the express wishes of the people, are well known in Fianna Fáil. The Minister for Local Government is well known, the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, sitting opposite, is well known. He refuses to get down to talk to the people for whose welfare primarily he is responsible. The Minister for Education refuses to talk to the people concerned with education in this country.
I do not know what the Taoiseach will do about them but he has a responsibility to do something. Frankly, I think the only solution is that he should introduce them to Deputy MacEntee, because Deputy MacEntee has friends in Greece, and I think they would be suitably employed there imposing martial law. Either that or, perhaps, Backbencher's NGKA might come out from its anonymity like Taca and make Deputy Boland Taoiseach of that organisation, the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, Tánaiste, and, perhaps, even find a job for Deputy Lenihan also. That deals with our friend Deputy Boland particularly. When the Taoiseach spoke here earlier he tried to make the point that there was an element of political opportunism in Fine Gael tabling this motion of no confidence at the present time, and that this, of course, applied also to the motion in the name of Labour.
However, the Taoiseach saw no such element in his, on the same day, bringing in a staggering Budget that will leave the people of this country incapable of thinking of anything except the backbreaking load of added taxation that has been piled on their backs and which they are being asked to accept. The Taoiseach so far has got away successfully with his pose on the pious altar of rectitude, but the people are now finding him out and they have realised fully that he is well able to play Party politics with the best.
Since we put down this motion, and following this crushing defeat at the referendum, many people have come to me and said: "You had not to wait for the defeat to put this motion down. This motion is long overdue. There is overwhelming evidence available already to prove that they have failed completely to solve the many pressing problems from which the country is suffering and they appear to have no worthwhile ideas or plans for the future". After 30 years of Fianna Fáil in office we have a situation where unemployment is increasing rather than decreasing. We have emigration proceeding apace. We have health and social welfare services lagging behind the rest of Europe and we have a deplorable backlog of housing needs.
At the same time, we have scandalous speculation in building land. In the course of the past week, I have come across sites for sale, individual sites for houses, for £5,000 each, plus 5 per cent. I know another case where the speculator bought a nine-acre field for £47,000. He got planning permission for 75 housing sites on it. These housing sites are now being sold at £1,675 each, plus 5 per cent, plus—this is an important plus—£22 ground rent, so that when these houses are built on this site, this speculator will have an annual income of not less than £1,600 from the ground rents alone. This is the type of speculation that the Government have facilitated and encouraged. It is what brought Taca into being. They are the people who want to see Fianna Fáil continue in office. They are the people who have grown fat during Fianna Fáil's reign in office. Fianna Fáil have refused absolutely to accept our proposals for the setting up of an impartial body to deal with planning appeals. They know that these favours can be handed out, that they can make or break any such person and that money has been put into the pockets of people of this kind.
It is all right for the Minister for Local Government to come in here and tell us all the present Government have done in relation to the housing problem. What I want to know is what is the present position. It is deplorable. There is a backlog of housing needs and I do not know when it will be caught up with and I do not think that any evidence is needed to prove that many thousands of our people have been living in deplorable housing conditions for many years. This city is ringed with caravans. Every approach road to the city is locked up with caravans on the side of the road and every open space has caravans. These caravans are occupied by decent people who cannot find the wherewithal to buy a housing site and build houses. Those people cannot get a local authority house and do not qualify in many cases for a local authority house.
In many of these caravans you have children of nine, ten and 11 years of age who do not know what it is to run from one room to another and who possibly will never know the joy of running from one room to another. How children can be expected to grow up with a healthy mind and wholesome aspirations from these surroundings beats me, and how any Minister for Local Government can come in here, with his own Government in office for so long, and flap his wings about what has been done about the housing situation in this country beats me.
I think the people have sized up the situation. They have realised that this Government is more concerned about the wealthy people in this country and about making the rich people richer than they are about unfortunate people who are confronted with circumstances such as I describe. We do not find the Minister for Local Government going to Ballyfermot on a Sunday morning to see the position there and listen to the plight of many people: but he can come in and attack people in this House who are trying to do what they can to assist people of that kind.
I said earlier that, instead of improving, the unemployment situation is worsening. Unfortunately the facts are there and this fact does not require any proof from me or from anybody else. The main reason why we have this situation is that many people are fleeing from conditions in rural Ireland. We are not able to find jobs for them outside rural Ireland and we have no plans to hold them in rural Ireland or to try and find worthwhile occupation for them there. So, therefore, we have no plans in rural Ireland and we have no plans when they leave it. Were it not for the safety valve of emigration this Government would be out of office long ago.
The people of rural Ireland are the most important sector in this country. On their production depends our ability to buy the raw materials for all other industries. We know that, if they do not produce agricultural goods at a price at which we can sell them in the export market, the whole of the economy is doomed. It has long since been well established that the welfare of the economy as a whole in the last analysis depends on how agriculture is doing and how much it is producing for export. The more we succeed in producing in rural Ireland the more dependent we become on export markets.
What is the situation in agriculture to-day? I said earlier on that we have a situation where the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries is not talking to the people in the industry. This war is in existence now for over two years. I personally have pleaded with the Minister and with the farmers concerned to try and build a bridge between them but the Minister is not prepared to come and meet them. He is not prepared to accept that he is there to serve the people and not to bully them and not to drive them. The day is gone and should be buried forever when farmers can be kicked around and dictated to by their own Minister.
An essential starting point in any agricultural policy programme is the full involvement and participation of the farmers on whom the future of the industry depends. If we have not this type of democracy in agriculture, we have no hope. We talk about industrial democracy but I think it is far more essential to have democracy in agriculture.
This week what have we been given? What has agriculture been given? It has been blamed for the heavy taxation that has been imposed on the people's back in the second enormous Budget we have had this year. But, what are they likely to get out of it? The subsidy on calves will give them nothing this year. That is accepted. It does not operate until the 1st April next and the one penny a gallon for those who produce milk up to 7,000 gallons cannot bring in more, cannot cost the Government more than £250,000 in what is left of this year. The Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries knows, and nobody has to tell him, that the end of the lactation period has arrived and that cows will be dry over the winter in the dairying areas and the amount of milk involved in this will certainly not call for expenditure up to the amount described in this second Budget. It is ridiculous to say it will. It is ridiculous to suggest that this taxation has been found necessary because of the fact that there are £6 million for the farmers. This is the type of deplorable attitude that exists towards the Irish farmers and Irish agriculture. That has been in evidence here for a long time.
If farmers get anything in a budget it should operate from April or May, that is the summer. The other sectors of the people who have to pay for this enormous load of taxation are said to carry the farmers on their back, when in fact the reverse is the case. Today we hear that this limited number of small farmers are getting this one penny when their cows are dry. On the same day as we are told that there will be £8 for a calf on a farm where no milk will be supplied to a creamery or no milk will be supplied to a city or a town, we hear the news that the B and I are charging 25s more per beast for bringing cattle from Dublin to Liverpool and that they are going to confine their operations in future to one route. This means that cattle being exported from Cork and from all over the country will first have to be conveyed to Dublin. I would like the Minister to calculate the cost of bringing those cattle to Dublin and then 25s more to convey them to England from Dublin and only on the one route. I hold that the loss involved in this to the producers of cattle is in fact going to be much greater than what the Minister is providing so that the sooner the sing-song about what the farmers of this country are getting is given up the better. They are getting a pittance.
What the Minister is doing is encouraging people to stay below 7,000 gallons. He knows as well as I know that this is not an economic unit of production. We have had programmes on television indicating that if you want an economic unit, a viable unit, you must have 30 cows on a 40-45 acre farm of good land. Here we have the situation where the Minister comes in offering a penny a gallon to those who produce under 7,000 gallons. This does not make sense to me and it does not make sense to anybody. We have the Second Programme for Economic Expansion laying down certain targets. We have not nearly reached those targets in cow numbers, in cattle numbers or in milk production but the farmers are told: "You are producing too much milk. We must stop you producing milk." They are told at the same time: "You are producing too much wheat. We must stop this. Look at what this is involving the country in." We have a situation where we are not able to supply our quota of bacon to the British market. This arises purely and solely because Fianna Fáil have no agricultural policy and never had an agricultural policy and because their policy is being decided from day to day and from month to month.
I said earlier on that it was the job of the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries to serve the people and to serve the farmers of this country. I want to say more about that. It is also the job of the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries to take some of the uncertainty out of farming in the future. He must look a reasonable distance ahead and he must plan a reasonable distance ahead. He should be able to say to the farmers: "I want you to produce so much of this, that and the other and, if you do, I will guarantee that you will get a rock bottom price of so much." Put a floor on it and say: "You will get this price when you produce so much and I will guarantee an outlet." No such statement has been made and consequently there is no confidence in the future of Irish farming. No farmer is in the position today that he can plan ahead and that he can make worthwhile investment knowing in advance that, if he does this, he will have an outlet and a reasonable price for his produce. This should be engaging the attention of the Minister and it certainly has not been engaging the attention of the Minister. We have had slumps and booms and every time that we produce more pigs, more grain, more milk, more cattle, we have a slump simply and solely because forecasting and marketing as it should be done in a modern society is just not being done. It is being neglected.
We have a situation at the present time where the Minister says that there must be a shift away from milk and, at one and the same time, his advisers are going around the country, especially in the intensive development areas, telling the farmers: "Your only hope is to get into milk. This is the best way to increase your income. This is the best advice we can give you!" Surely that is a contradiction in terms and surely a stop must be put to this once and for all. The farmers must be told where they are going.
We have a chaotic position in the pig industry. Smuggling has been referred to earlier on today. We have a situation whereby we are not able to supply our quota on the British market. We have failed to do that and we are only supplying it because of the enormous amount of pigs being smuggled in across the Border from the Six Counties. My view is that no serious attempt has been made to stop this smuggling and that this is because of our embarrassment at not being able to supply our quota. This smuggling is costing the taxpayers of the country on average £12,000 per week. These smugglers are well known and the number of pigs they are smuggling is well known but, as Deputy Coughlan has said, were it not for these smugglers the bacon industry in this country would be sitting down. This is a deplorable situation. We have skim milk to the point where we cannot dispose of it and there has been no organised effort to get the pig industry into a situation where it could absorb an immense amount of this skim. We have failed because we refused to accept that you will not get pigs produced in this country unless you get a balance between the price of pigs and the price of feeding stuffs and unless you keep this relationship always the same or reasonably the same. Farmers will get into pigs and get out of pigs.
We have had the chairman of the Pigs and Bacon Commission—where I think a good job is being done having regard to the circumstances—coming into the open and saying that the situation that took place here in 1965 would justify a public inquiry in any other country in the world except here and that obviously the advice he had given and the recommendations he had made to the Department were ignored. It is a deplorable situation that this can be said and not contradicted and that farmers were put into the situation, long before they had reached the target of pig production set by Fianna Fáil in the Second Programme, where they practically had to give pigs away. It is no wonder the situation is as it is but I think it is something to be thoroughly ashamed of.
It is obvious that the market is there. It is obvious that the Irish farmer is in a position to supply that market. It is obvious, too, that there are difficulties in the disposal of milk products and that the Minister has a duty to attract people into other lines of production. We cannot afford to say in the case of milk production, the economy as a whole cannot afford to say: "You cannot produce any more milk," when we have regard to the fact that two-thirds of our beef cattle are supplied from the dairy herds of this country. We are treading on very dangerous ground now and we offer £8 for calves in this very limited category. At one and the same time, as I understand it, we are taking away the calved heifer subsidy scheme. If that is so, the result will be a minus benefit to the farmers of this country. There will be no benefit in it and I think the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries knows this well and it is time he did something about it.
I spoke about increased charges for transport and so on. I believe the Minister has been forewarned on many occasions that this situation would arise. He had been warned about the situation in England with which the people in the cattle trade were confronted when the B and I allowed their waggon stock to run down and when farmers and traders were required to convey their cattle by road at very much increased costs. Obviously nothing was done about this or, if so, nobody knows that any effort was made; but we do know that no success was achieved in regard to overcoming these difficulties. Now there is a war between B and I and British Railways, a war that the Irish farmers and those in the cattle trade must endure. The Minister should do whatever he can, with his colleague the Minister for Transport and Power, to resolve these difficulties and ensure that our farmers get the service they deserve. He should try to reduce the costs involved.
I am dealing with agricultural matters and we shall probably be dealing with them in a week or so again because we have now reached the situation when one Estimate is catching up with the next simply because we have had so much unwanted and undesirable legislation introduced, eating into the time of the House and causing unnecessary expense to the country. We had the referendum thrown in for good measure. We scarcely know what Estimate we are discussing. The country is alarmed at the situation in regard to sheep. Sheep numbers are down by about 500,000 or something approaching that. The reply to a question I had down the other day indicates that the subsidy on sheep is only about half what it is on other products. Here we have an imbalance that apparently had not been looked at or no great effort was made to level it up. It is a serious situation when we want to attract farmers into lines of production that are easy to sell to find that we are making little or no effort to bring that about.
What is our grain policy? Since last January we imported about £1.5 million of low-class and low-quality pollard. Why? Why did we refuse last year to give our farmers a few extra shillings per barrel or per ton for barley? Why did we not encourage the growing of greater quantities of barley by increasing the price? We all made a case for an increased price for barley or for an acreage subsidy for barley as they do in Northern Ireland. We are boasting about the £8 for a very small number of calves but I was in Northern Ireland last week buying cows and I inquired from a farmer what they were getting by way of subsidy in Northern Ireland and he informed me that they were getting 10 guineas for bull calves and 9 guineas for heifer calves of all breeds and sorts. We are now boasting about taking away the heifer subsidy scheme and giving a small subsidy for a limited number of calves.
I am glad horticulture is making some progress, even though last year we imported £2 million worth of apples. I believe strawberries are paying, but no effort is being made to find a market on a contractual basis for a reasonable period ahead such as would induce people to make an investment knowing they would not be throwing away their money.
I have not much time left but I want to say a word to the Minister about the Cook-Sprague Report. Why is this Report left lying about? We first had the Knapp Report. We still have this chaos in the milk industry. Recommendations were made in the Knapp Report but we were not wholly satisfied with that and we brought in two more experts to check on the previous ones and they reported a considerable time ago. The Cook-Sprague Report, when it comes out, is not the Cook-Sprague Report but an edited version of it. I want the Minister to say why was he afraid to print what was in the Cook-Sprague Report and why it has been altered and what right he has to alter a Report produced by two experts and paid for out of public money?
There is also the store cattle report. That is lying in the Minister's Department since last April and not yet printed. I am sure it contains some very important material that would benefit the country, but it is kept in the background like whatever the Minister has to say about all his visits to the British Minister for Agriculture. That has also been kept secret. The House has been told nothing about what happened in the course of the Minister's visits to his British counterpart. What matters were discussed? There are many matters of urgent importance to this country. The Minister promised the House before we went into Recess that he would come back and tell us what it was all about and asked us not to embarrass him about it in advance. We refrained but, after all this time, it cannot be a cause of embarrassment for the Minister now to stand up and tell the House what he has been discussing with the British Minister because there have been no obvious results. No great beneficial results have followed these visits.
I do not want to continue to speak but I believe the time has come when the people will speak. A general election is obviously in the offing and I think the people are looking forward to that day when, I believe, their verdict will be for a change of government. That is the relief the country is looking for. The present Government stand discredited before the people for their failure in so many departments. I think it was Deputy Coughlan who said earlier that there was no fear of the Government going to the country. I agree with him because I think if they went to the country they would be slaughtered.