As, perhaps, most members of the Seanad are aware, this is a validating Bill. It is a Bill which seeks to continue in operation for another year the Seeds and Fertilisers Act and to validate what has been done thereunder prior to the passing of the Bill. I should like to explain that this Bill invariably has been a validating Bill. It becomes necessary only when local authorities decide to put in operation schemes of the kind contemplated under the Bill.
This Bill is not in any strict sense of the term an agricultural credit Bill, and I should like to emphasise that to the House. If the primary purpose of this Bill were to make better provision for the extension of agricultural credit, it would not be introduced by the Minister for Local Government but would become the responsibility of the Minister for Agriculture. The primary purpose of the Bill is to afford assistance to necessitous persons who happen to be land holders, persons in poor circumstances who are in possession of plots of land which may be large or small, who occupy these plots, and who desire to produce food primarily for their own use—though, of course, the sale of any surplus or any part of the produce is not debarred—but who are unable to secure the necessary credit to enable them to purchase seeds and fertilisers for the purposes of cultivation.
The object of the Bill is to facilitate local authorities who may desire to operate credit schemes so as to extend such credit to persons as will enable them to procure for themselves, upon satisfactory terms, the necessary supplies of seeds and fertilisers for the husbandry of their pieces of land. The principal feature of the whole scheme is, perhaps, the fact that the Government guarantee a certain amount of the loss, up to a total of £25,000 in all, which may fall on the local authorities. The exact amount of the guarantee to each authority is laid down in the Schedule to the principal Act. So far we have not been called upon to fulfil any part of the guarantee, nor do I think any local authority has been put in such a position that it will have to write off as a loss any part of the guarantees which it has given.
The amount outstanding in respect of the last scheme for which we have full particulars, the scheme operated in the year 1941-1942, is £3,449. In that year the total amount of the guarantee was £56,285 and, of course, there is every prospect that eventually the full amount of the guarantees will be made good to the county councils— that is to say, there will be no significant liability.
It is desirable to have this Bill, if possible, before the close of the financial year, so that we may be in a position to say to the county councils that we have the necessary authority to do what we have done in relation to it. The only thing we have done, in fact, has been to call their attention to the desirability of making provision for this year's harvest in the same way as last year's
Question agreed to.
Agreed to take the remaining Stages now.