I move the motion standing in my name:—
That in view of the depressed conditions at present existing in the farming industry owing to the operation of British tariffs on agricultural exports the Seanad recommends the Executive Council to take steps to fund the Land Commission annuities falling due in November and December of this year.
I want to assure the House that my only object in moving this motion, which I hope the Seanad will pass, is to try to induce the Government to afford this much-needed relief to our farmers. I also hope that the discussion on this motion to-day will induce the Government to take stock of the situation of the country and of the position to which the country is drifting if this dispute with England is not settled immediately. I have been told that I should have included in my motion the remission of all rates on agricultural land as well. I considered the proposal and I agreed that if all rates and annuities were remitted it would be very little compensation to the farmers for the loss of their markets, but I have taken into account that this motion for the funding of the annuities falling due in November and December next will be no loss to the State and no loss to the Government. Consequently, I have confined the motion to the funding of the Land Commission annuities.
In asking to have the annuities funded for this year I am asking only for a small concession. I am not an advocate of the non-payment of rates and annuities but I say that it is not right or just for the Government to demand annuities from the farmers during the period in which they have already paid these annuities to the British Government four times over in the shape of duties on their exports. I also make the appeal to the Government to grant this concession on the grounds of the farmers' inability to pay. The farmer cannot pay rates or annuities or anything else out of the profits he has made on his land for the last two years.
If the Government compels the farmers to pay these charges they will be only compelling them to pay out of capital which they badly require for the working of their land or out of moneys which they owed to the banks, the merchants or the shopkeepers—money which is not their own. I know farmers in many parts of the country who were two or three years ago able to afford a motor car and to live in comfortable circumstances but who are in the position to-day that all the stock in their land, if sold, would not pay their rates or annuities. These are the crippled soldiers of the economic war. I say it is up to the Government to consider these farmers and to accede to the request which I hope the Seanad will make.
I make this statement, and it has been made time and again by responsible representatives in the Dáil and in this House, that we have paid our annuities to the British Government four times over since the start of the economic war. That statement has been disputed by many members of the Executive Council and by many supporters of Fianna Fáil. The Minister for Agriculture stated that the farmers were getting only 18/- per head less for their cattle than was being paid to the farmers in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Other statements were made that prices in this country were quite as good as they were in any part of England, Scotland or Northern Ireland. The foolish statement was even made that the people in Northern Ireland were sending cattle and other agricultural produce across the Border in order to have them sold in the Free State markets. I do not want to say anything further about those statements because that sort of argument would not deceive a child. I will instance how the tariffs are affecting me, and I am sure I can prove that I have paid my land annuities to the British Government four times over. My average annuities would amount to slightly over £1 per acre, and most of my land would fatten, during the grazing season, a bullock to the Irish acre. On that bullock that I export, I pay £6 to the British Government in duty and I receive from the Irish Government 35/- in bounties. Taking 35/- from £6 you have left £4 5s., which I am directly out of pocket because I am paying it to the British Government since the land annuities were withheld from the British Government. I am consequently paying £4 5s. and land annuities, together with a demand made upon me to pay my land annuities again to the Land Commissiou.
I have here a sale note which I got from Birkenhead last week for the sale of 25 cattle. The Minister can have a look at it. The 25 cattle sold at Birkenhead at £14 a head made £350 and I have returned to me out of that £350, £172 18s. 8d. There are some ordinary charges but the Customs charge on those 25 cattle is £146—£6 apiece on 23 and £4 apiece on two. I, therefore, contend that no man can dispute that that £146, of which I get 35/- a head back, represents £4 5s. a head which I am paying to the British Government for the 25 acres of land on which those 25 cattle were fed. I hope that that will finish the statements that have been made that we are not paying our land annuities and that the British buyer is paying portion of the tariffs. No matter what the British buyer is paying, we are paying directly £4 5s. out of our pockets. We pay £6 and we get 35/- back, which means £4 5s. for every acre of fattening land is paid to the British Government for the retention of the land annuities, and in most cases these land annuities would be very slightly over £1 per Irish acre.
The farmers are the only sufferers in the present dispute with England. They are paying practically all the duties on the exports; they are paying most of the import duties; they have lost their 10 per cent. preference and they have lost their markets. They have been told to do something different from what they have been doing and everything will come all right and that prosperity awaits them if they follow the schemes advocated by the Government. None of those promises has materialised. We were told to grow more oats, to fatten more pigs, to have more tillage, and we would be prosperous. We have seen what has happened in the case of oats. The Minister for Agriculture is going frantic trying to get somebody to buy oats and relieve the farmers of what they cannot store, but nobody is going to buy, nobody is going to feed anything because nothing pays the cost of production. That has stopped the sale of the oats. We are told to produce more pigs. A quota has now been put on pigs, and the quota for the month has been used up in a fortnight or three weeks and we are left stranded with our pigs for the balance of the month and cannot turn them into cash except at ridiculously low prices well under the cost of production. What are we going to do with the surplus produce unless we burn it?
It has been said that if we produced oats and went in for more tillage, everything would come right. What do we want oats or any feeding stuff for unless we are going to produce and to make beef, bacon and mutton? That is the only thing we have tillage for. Looking at our imports and exports since this policy was adopted by Fianna Fáil, we see that in the period September, 1931, to August, 1932, we exported 711,786 cattle, which realised £11,294,667. We come then to the period of the economic war, September, 1932, to August, 1933—there is a little portion of the economic war in the previous period—and we find that we exported 585,082 cattle, which realised £6,503,000, a loss of £5,000,000 in our cattle alone. In sheep, we exported 522,872 in 1931-32, which realised £942,722, and in 1932-33 we exported 348,000—a little more than half—at a value of £388,159, about one-third of the value. We exported in the 1931-32 period 416,672 pigs of a value of £1,616,755, and in the 1932-33 period, 190,884 pigs—practically one-third—of a value of £415,250, practically one-third of the former value.