Emergency Powers Orders—Motion to Annul.

Mr. Counihan

I move:—

That Emergency Powers (No. 181) Order, 1942 (Second Amendment) Order, 1942, Emergency Powers (No. 227) Order, 1942 (Amendment) Order, 1942, Emergency Powers (No. 228) Order, 1942 (Amendment) Order, 1942, Emergency Powers (No. 249) Order, 1942, made by the Government on the 30th day of December, 1942, be and are hereby annulled.

When we passed the Emergency Powers Act we all believed that the Orders made under that Act would be based on commonsense and would not inflict hardship on any class of the community. The Orders which I propose should be annulled, in my opinion, are not based on commonsense and, as I am informed and as I believe, they inflict unnecessary hardships on the pork butchers and will not have the effect of increasing the production of pigs and bacon but of decreasing production.

As Senators may not understand the full meaning of the Orders, I think I should read a circular that was sent to each registered pork butcher by the Secretary to the Department of Agriculture, which fully explains the objects of Order No. 249. It is as follows:—

"I am directed by the Minister for Agriculture to call your attention to the provisions of the Emergency Powers (No. 249) Order, 1942, which was made by the Government on the 30th December, 1942, and under the provisions of which no person shall, after the 31st December, 1942, cure at any premises bacon for sale or for reward unless such person is the holder of a curing and slaughtering licence granted by the Minister in respect of such premises.

The provisions of Section 14 of the Pigs and Bacon Act, 1935, whereby registered pork butchers were permitted to cure a certain percentage of the pork used and dealt with by them accordingly ceased to have effect after the latter date and it will not, therefore, be necessary for you to furnish returns on form P.B. 7 to this Department in respect of any accounting period, within the meaning of Section 15 of the Act, after the month of December, 1942.

Kindly acknowledge receipt of this letter.

I am, Sir or Gentlemen,

Your obedient Servant,

D. Twomey,

Secretary."

Under the Pigs and Bacon Act, pork butchers were allowed to cure or pickle 15 per cent. of the amount which they were permitted by quota to kill, but, since this Order came into force, it is an offence punishable by severe penalties—as all Emergency Powers Orders provide—a big fine or jail, or jail and a big fine combined. The whole point is that the practice of pickling bacon is a trade that has been carried on by the pork butchers for centuries. This Order prohibits any such thing. There are several portions of pig which are not suitable for sale as pork chops or pork steaks, such as the bellies, heads and other portions. The age-old practice of the pork butchers was to pickle those portions and sell them as pickled pork. Anyone who understands anything about the meat trade knows that pork is a very perishable commodity, particularly in murky, heavy or sultry weather. It gets tainted very quickly. On Saturday night the pork butcher might be convinced that the pork he had on hands would not keep until the following week. His natural instinct would be to put it into pickle and sell it on the Monday or Tuesday as perfectly good food. That has been the practice, but, in the present circumstances, he cannot do that. He can throw it into the ashbin, or burn it, but he is not allowed to pickle it. I contend that that is inflicting a great hardship on pork butchers. The Order, instead of conserving bacon or food for the people, will result in a considerable amount of waste if that pork is not allowed to be pickled. The Minister may say, as he said in Monaghan, that he is doing all this to preserve food for the human population, that if we had more pigs we would have less wheat, and less oats and other foods for consumption by humans. I do not at all agree with the Minister. Anyone with a practical knowledge of the country knows that there is plenty of food, sufficient to produce double the amount of bacon that is being produced at present, if an economic price were given for pigs.

The fact is that the food which, if a good price were given for pigs, would be devoted to producing pigs for bacon, is going to produce forward stores for shipment to England, that is, for producing cattle. If there was an economic price for bacon, we would produce bacon and produce twice the quantity we are producing at present. For that reason I cannot see any justification for this Order or why the Minister should not give some concession, meet the trade in a reasonable way and allow this practice, which according to the pork butchers has been carried on for centuries, to continue to some extent. The amount which they were allowed to cure under the Pigs and Bacon Act was 15 per cent. If the Minister is prepared to make some concession, if he would say, for instance, that he would reduce the amount to 10 per cent. of the allotted quota, I would be satisfied. I think that in all fairness the Minister should pay some attention to the case the pork butchers have made, and give them the concession which I am demanding on their behalf.

Mr. McGee

I second the motion. I think the plea made by Senator Counihan on behalf of the pork butchers is only commonsense. Anybody living in a town and knowing the conditions which exist in popular pork shops on Saturday nights, will agree that Senator Counihan has given a correct picture of the situation. I do not wish to delay the House, but commonsense is the common law, and what we should try to brush aside in enforcing these Orders is lack of commonsense. I think the Minister would be well advised to meet the demands made by Senator Counihan.

Minister for Agriculture (Dr. Ryan)

We are sometimes blamed for making Orders of this kind without consulting those concerned in the trade, but we could not be blamed on that account in this case. Representatives of the pork butchers were invited to the Department and were shown the Orders before they were made. These representatives then said that they saw no objection to the Orders. They did subsequently, it is true, find that they had some objection to make, and they were again interviewed on last Monday by the officials of the Department. They then put forward a claim very similar to that which Senator Counihan has outlined in his speech, that, first of all, they should be free to pickle or salt the heads, feet, bellies and sometimes the hams. Heads and feet are, of course, exempt from the Order. So far as this Order is concerned, they may do whatever they like with the heads and feet, but under this Order they would not be permitted legally to salt either the hams or the bellies. They claim that there is a great demand, first of all, for cooked ham. They say that cooked ham is sold very often in their shops, and they want to be permitted to salt and cure ham and subsequently to cook and sell it as cured ham. With regard to bellies, they say they cannot be sold as pork, and that the practice was to pickle them and sell them as pickled pork. That may be all very fine from their point of view, but the object of the Order, as quoted by Senator Counihan, was to help the Pigs and Bacon Commission to distribute as much bacon as possible, as equitably as possible.

One of the Orders had for its object the prevention of illegal curing. By illegal curing, I mean curing by people who were not licensed to cure bacon for sale. I am not referring to farmers who kill pigs for their own use. Curing in that case is all right but we have tried to prevent farmers, shopkeepers and anybody else from killing pigs and converting them into bacon for sale. Up to this pork butchers were permitted to salt or to make bacon out of 15 per cent. of their output. It was also deemed desirable to stop that business because it was felt that now that the pork butchers are getting a quota, they would use all the pigs they would get under that quota as pork and they could not make the same case for having to convert part of that pork into bacon. I am not very impressed by the arguments used by the pork butchers, I must say, because in the first place, pigs being so very scarce, we should try to get all the pigs we possibly can converted into bacon, and, secondly, we should get that bacon distributed more in the rural areas than in the towns. After all, the rural population are consumers of bacon to a great extent and have not the same opportunities for getting beef, mutton and fresh meat generally as townspeople. The people of the towns and cities do not use bacon very much except for breakfast, and I think we will all agree that the countryman's dinner is more important than the townsman's breakfast. We should try to convert all the pigs we possibly can into bacon, and, secondly, to get that bacon distributed as much as possible in the country.

Reference has been made to the conditions with which a pork butcher has to deal on Saturday night. I think we should discourage the pork butcher killing more pigs than he requires for pork and, if he does overshoot the mark, we should not indemnify him against loss. Of course, there will not be any loss, probably. He will find some way of dealing with the stuff left on his hands. For instance, I have never heard, and I do not know that Senator Counihan has, an ordinary butcher raising any difficulty about the leg of mutton or the side of mutton that he has not sold on Saturday night. He is able to find use for it all right. Probably if one of us went into a shop on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday and asked for a nice leg of mutton he would produce the leg of mutton that he had kept in some place since the previous Saturday night.

Mr. Healy

In cold storage.

Dr. Ryan

Yes. The pork butcher can do the same thing. As far as Saturday night is concerned, I do not think we shall have very much difficulty about it. I think the pork butcher will get over that and that we should not facilitate the pork butcher in carrying over anything he cannot sell in the way of pork. We should, I think, take the other line more than we have been taking it up to now, and make it difficult for the pork butcher to dispose of any part of a pig other than as pork. In other words, where he has had a sale for three and a half pigs in the week and he wants to get rid of the remaining half, we will not facilitate him to dispose of four pigs. We shall do our best to bring him down to three pigs so as to let the other pig go to the bacon factory to be converted into bacon, which is wanted very much more urgently. I think from the public point of view we would have been justified in trying to cut out pork completely, because the people in towns have beef and mutton, and there is no great necessity for pork. There is much more necessity for bacon. Of course, we had to have some regard for the people in the trade and, manifestly, it would be unfair to compel the pork butcher to close down entirely. In fact, we are giving him more than his proportion of the pigs under this Order than he got when pigs were plentiful. When pigs were plentiful pork butchers got 9 per cent. of the total. Before this Order was operated, that proportion had gone up to something like 30 per cent. Now it has been regulated at about 15 per cent., so that he is really getting more than his proper proportion. I should say—it may be some consolation to Senator Counihan—that we have listened to the pork butchers and, although I am not at all inclined to accede to their plea that they should be entitled to cure hams in order to sell them as cooked hams, I am inclined to listen to the other story that these bellies cannot be sold as pork and should be pickled. If we can find a way of doing that without vitiating the whole Order, we shall do it. That is all I can say at the moment.

I do not want to enter into any deep controversy with Senator Counihan about the price of pigs. If Senator Counihan would apply the ordinary rule of 5 cwts. of meal to 1 cwt. of pork, he would find that, if he feeds his oats to pigs, it will be worth, under that rule, 43/- a barrel—which is a very good price—and if he feeds his barley to pigs, his barley will be worth 50/- a barrel.

Mr. Counihan

If the price were economical, we would feed it to pigs instead of to cattle, which we have to do at present.

Dr. Ryan

On paper, the price appears to be more than economical, so that there must be some other reason why the pigs are not so fed. I think the reason is that the oats and barley are not there.

Mr. Baxter

Is the Minister referring to 5 cwts. of oats?

Dr. Ryan

Five cwts. of meal.

Mr. Baxter

Oatmeal?

Dr. Ryan

I do not want the Senator to pin me down as saying that a pig can be fed on oats alone. I was referring to the mixture—oats, barley and everything else—and I said that you will get 43/- for your oats and 50/- for your barley used in that mixture. Those are not bad prices.

Mr. Baxter

Did the Minister put any figure on the cost of cooking?

Donnchadh O hEaluighthe

Ba mhaith liom ceist do chur ar an Aire. Do I understand from the Minister's statement that there is no restriction on a farmer feeding a pig, and killing it for his own requirements?

Dr. Ryan

No. He must not, however, sell the pig.

Mr. Counihan

Did I understand the Minister to say that he is going to make a concession to the pork butchers with regard to some of their claims?

Dr. Ryan

We are considering whether or not we can meet them on the point with regard to the bellies. I should not like to say anything definite now. If we can meet them, we shall do so.

Mr. Counihan

That being so, would I be in order in moving the adjournment of the debate until we see what concession the Minister will make?

Dr. Ryan

Suppose I retaliate by saying that I shall not make any order until I see what the Seanad thinks about the matter.

Mr. Counihan

I move the adjournment of the debate.

Leas-Chathaoirleach

The Senator must also propose a date for the resumption of the debate.

Mr. Counihan

This day fortnight.

Mr. O'Donovan

On a point of order, can we adjourn the debate on a motion which has been proposed, seconded and discussed?

Leas-Chathaoirleach

It is a matter for the Seanad. If the Seanad agrees so to do, the debate can be adjourned. It is not an unusual procedure.

Seanad Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 20 Jan 1943