Poultry Hatcheries Bill, 1947—Second Stage.

Question proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Minister for Agriculture (Mr. Smith)

This Bill has the twofold object of ensuring, first, that the eggs used for hatching in poultry hatcheries are derived from flocks of suitable type and quality which are free from disease, and, second, that the production and distribution of chicks by hatcheries are carried out under conditions calculated to reduce to a minimum the danger of spreading disease.

In recent years the older system of hatching eggs on the farm, either by natural means or in incubators, is tending to be replaced by the distribution of day-old chicks from large-scale commercial hatcheries. Some 24 large commercial hatcheries are already in operation in different parts of the country and the establishment of a good many more in the near future may be expected. The sale of day-old chicks is also engaged in by a considerable number of poultry-keepers throughout the country who have facilities for artificial incubation.

Although the establishment of commercial hatcheries is a very desirable development, there is no doubt that the danger of outbreaks of disease on a large scale in poultry flocks will increase as such hatcheries grow in size and number. There is at present no control over the sources from which the eggs used in hatcheries are obtained or the conditions under which incubation is carried out and chicks are distributed. The same remark applies to other distributors of chicks, except where these are holders of poultry stations under my Department's poultry stations scheme. However, hatchery owners or poultry-keepers may exercise no discrimination in the selection of eggs for incubation, in which event the chicks distributed would be of very doubtful quality.

It was recommended by the Committee of Inquiry on Post-Emergency Agricultural Policy that distributors of hatching eggs and day-old chicks should be licensed under conditions to be determined by the Department of Agriculture and that holders of hatchery licences should be prohibited from incubating eggs other than those derived from flocks certified to be blood-tested and free from disease.

It is provided that, when the Bill is enacted, the Act shall come into operation at such times as may be fixed by Order of the Minister for Agriculture. The present intention is that the Act will be brought into operation in two stages, as follows:—

First Stage: This will be taken as soon as practicable after the enactment of the Bill and will include the operation of Parts I, II, IV and Sections 15 to 18 in Part III of the Act. During this stage, poultry hatcheries, other than those classes that may be excepted, will be prohibited from operating except under licence to be issued each year subject to such conditions as the Minister for Agriculture may think proper. Provision is made in the Bill for the Minister to make regulations exempting from the licensing requirements hatcheries of certain classes to be defined in such regulations, for example, hatcheries which do not engage in the production of chicks for sale or of which the hatching capacity is less than a specified minimum. Egg supplies for licensed hatcheries will have to be obtained from farms the owners of which have been granted "provisional permits" each year to supply eggs to licensed hatcheries. This "provisional permit" arrangement is intended to be temporary. It was devised to get over the initial difficulty presented by the fact that hatcheries are getting eggs from many farms that are not of the standard that will ultimately be required for "approved egg supply farms". Accordingly, so as not to disorganise the working of existing hatcheries, it will be necessary for some time to grant "provisional permits" to many of these farms and so give them the opportunity to qualify as "approved" farms. The provisional permit period will also afford an opportunity of determining the reliability and honesty of the owners of existing hatching-egg supply farms.

Second Stage: When this is reached, after the first stage has been developed for some years, licensed hatcheries will not be allowed to purchase eggs for hatching from any farm which has not been "approved" each year as an egg supply farm. At this point the system of granting provisional permits will cease.

The Bill provides that the Minister for Agriculture may authorise persons to be inspectors for the purposes of the Act. A number of inspectors will have to be appointed on the headquarters staff of the Department of Agriculture and it is also intended to ask the County Committees of Agriculture to consent to having their poultry instructors authorised to be inspectors for the purposes of the Act. I anticipate that the Committees of Agriculture will, in general, be prepared to agree to that course.

Mr. Sweetman

With the two-fold aim of this Bill, as outlined by the Minister, I am in entire agreement. I can visualise the difficulties and dangers that he foresees. However, with his method of dealing with those dangers, even though it has the backing of the Committee on Post-War Agricultural Policy, I am in entire disagreement. I accept that it is absolutely necessary to provide many of the things not in this Bill but by means of Ministerial regulations. Certain of the lines on which he wishes and on which it is very desirable that poultry hatcheries should operate clearly must vary from time to time and could not be included in a permanent enactment. Therefore, I am with him to the extent that these requirements should be set down, designated and regulated by Orders and regulations. Where I differ with him is at that point.

I cannot see why it is not possible to provide that the Minister will be given the power to make regulations to determine the manner in which hatcheries shall operate, so that in their operation they will not increase the dangers to which he has referred, without introducing a system of licensing. It seems to me that it should be possible to operate the Bill in such a way as to ensure that there would be regulations and Orders, breaches of which could and should be visited with the strongest possible penalties in the ordinary way. Instead of that, the Minister—and I admit quite frankly he is working on the precedent of the committee's report—is choosing to adopt a system by virtue of which an unnamed executive officer in his Department—and here I am not casting any aspersion on any official—hearing only one side of the case, is going to determine whether a man may or may not carry on what is, perhaps, his only means of livelihood, in which he may have sunk a great deal of capital. It seems to me contrary to the principle of justice and of fair play that that could be provided.

We can all understand that, during an emergency, a system of licences of that nature may be necessary, but here we are dealing with an enactment which is to be part and parcel of our permanent law. We have now reached in this Bill a further extension of the power of executive control, by virtue of which a Government Department is to be able to determine whether A shall carry on business and whether B shall not carry on business. That appears to be undesirable. It may be dealt with in the way I suggest, by regulations from month to month providing the things the Minister considers desirable and necessary.

In considering the liberty of the ordinary commercial individual, it does not mean that in the exercise of his own liberty he is entitled to transgress on the liberty of others. If he is spreading disease, the dangers to which the Minister has rightly referred, it is proper that his liberty should be curtailed; but I suggest that it should be done in the correct way, that the penalty should be imposed in the open. No matter how well-intentioned any official may be, he is clearly only going to see one side of the picture. We are all human and liable to make mistakes. One of the reasons why courts as such provide a barrier against mistakes is that they do their work in the open, in the full light of the public, having to weigh and consider both sides of the evidence.

I want to say very deliberately that, in the case of this Bill, when a licence is withdrawn there should be a provision by which there would be the right of appeal to the district court or the circuit court. There should, at any rate, be some appeal board which would be over and above the Minister's Department. This is not a question that is going to affect any particular Party that happens to be the Government for the time being. It is a question which affects a person who may be deprived of his livelihood. He should have the right of explaining the reasons which operated on his mind in a particular set of circumstances. If there was an appeal board he would have a better chance of explaining that these circumstances were what he alleged and were not what the inspector of the county committee had alleged. It is difficult to see how, within the framework of this Bill, that important reservation for the right of the individual can be protected except by the setting up of an appeal board. Personally, I would have preferred the other way in which the Minister would impose stringent penalties, including a penalty such as that in the Road Traffic Act under which a person can be disqualified from driving his car. I would have preferred something on that line without, however, going as far as that, but I do think it is essential that there should be some appeal board to ensure that a person will not be deprived of his livelihood merely by Executive action. I am quite prepared to admit that such a thing can be done quite innocently by a Government Department which does not know the full facts. The individual should have the right to bring the full facts of his case not only to the attention, but to get the decision ultimately, of a person who is above the Executive, because the courts stand between the State on the one hand and the individual on the other.

Sir John Keane

I strongly agree with everything the last speaker has said. The principle at issue here is fundamental. In this Bill the Minister is taking power to licence an operation that may spread disease. One does not need a lot of imagination to think of the number of operations that, if carried out wrongly, are calculated to spread disease. For example, in the case of the bottling of stout, if dirty vessels are used, that may help to spread disease.

Mr. Smith

Or whiskey?

Sir John Keane

Perhaps whiskey may be regarded as a disinfectant.

Mr. Smith

Especially John Locke's.

Sir John Keane

Dairying is another very potent form of spreading infection. Should not every person who sells milk be licensed?

Mr. Smith

They are licensed.

Sir John Keane

In the case of dairying, penalties might be provided for the improper use of dirty vessels and so on. The offender might be brought to court and dealt with accordingly. The dairyman, however, does not operate under a licence which can be revoked.

Mr. Smith

He does.

Sir John Keane

As Senator Sweetman has so well stated there is a fundamental principle at issue in this, and on that basis it should be examined. I know that this is the totalitarian method of doing business. It is not the method of a free, democratic State, and there is a fundamental difference between the two. If the Minister says that he approves of these Soviet and Nazi methods, that is all right, but if, on the other hand, he says that he believes in the liberty of the subject, in Parliamentary control and in the rule of law, then he can never be privy to methods of this kind. I am worried that these things are so lightly regarded. Here the Minister comes along and, on a matter that is not of very wide importance perhaps, he gets in the thin edge of the wedge, and before we know where we are it is used as a precedent so that in a short time a large portion of our national life will be regulated in this way. That means to say that a Minister can make or unmake you. He can ruin you and put you out of business. It is not a question of going to court.

I need not repeat, although perhaps I had better do so, what was said by Senator Sweetman since the gravity of the principle at stake is so little appreciated by ordinary people and even by members of this House. Only last week a Senator asked, on another Bill, what was the objection to giving a Minister power to make any regulations he liked. There is always a very great objection, and the objection is much stronger in the case of this Bill than it was on the one we were discussing last week. We are told that all that is at stake here is the report of an inspector. That report may result in depriving a person of a business that he has built up, a business in which he has sunk a great deal of capital.

I notice also that under this Bill the Minister can attach conditions. They need not be what are called the prescribed conditions, which must be made subject to regulations. They can be any conditions that the Minister chooses to make. I do not know if Senator S. O'Donovan is here or not. He said on one occasion that I am always using the word "totalitarian". I do not know of any better word to use when dealing with legislation of this kind, legislation which gives the Executive power to make rules that, in fact, supersede the ordinary law. That is the fundamental objection that I have to this Bill. There are many details of the Bill that can be discussed on the Committee Stage. I would like to ask the Minister for an explanation as to whether it is necessary, before I can buy an incubator, to go to him and get an exemption. That would seem to me to be the position from my reading of the Bill—that if I want to hatch chickens artificially I have to get an exemption from the Minister. That shows how this thing of regulation has run mad. I would like to see this whole matter approached in an entirely different way—on the lines indicated by the last speaker.

Mr. Quirke

I move the adjournment of the debate.

Debate adjourned.

Business suspended at 6 p.m. and resumed at 7 p.m.

Mr. Quirke

I want to say very little on this Bill, but to express my amazement at the speech made by Senator Sir John Keane. If he had in the normal way attacked the Bill, and expressed his disapproval, I suppose nobody would be surprised. If, as he has done on numerous occasions, he took up the fight for the plain people in this country against people like Paddy Smith, Minister for Agriculture, or any other Minister of the Fianna Fáil Government, none of us would be surprised. But when he comes along and tells us that he can see no reason why there should be interference in this matter of the poultry industry, any more than there is interference in connection with the dairying industry, or the sale of milk, and matters of that kind, as I understood he meant to convey, the only thing I can say is that I am amazed at his ignorance of conditions, particularly in rural Ireland, and in Ireland as a whole.

It must be evident to Senator Sir John Keane, as it is to most other people, that there are most stringent regulations regarding the sale of milk, that people cannot supply milk for sale to the public unless their dairies, cowsheds, etc., are approved by the Department of Agriculture. One would think that this suggestion of licences in connection with the poultry industry was the first step of this kind. Senator Sir John Keane would describe such a policy as a dictatorial policy of the Department of Agriculture. One would imagine that it was since the new Minister took charge of the Department of Agriculture that the terrible step had been taken of insisting on licences in any particular industry or in connection with any particular matter over which that Department has control.

It is not necessary for me to refer the Senator to various regulations which have been enforced, not for the past year, not for the past five years, but for the past 20 years in relation to various matters over which the Department of Agriculture has control. It is not necessary to go into details, but I should like to remind the Senator that, even to start with sire pigs in the country, they have to be licensed by the Department of Agriculture. Lest it might take too long to deal with other matters over which the Department of Agriculture has control, I think I am right in suggesting that from the time a pig comes into the world, until it goes into the factory, there is, and has been for years, certain control including actual control in the bacon factory.

I also find it difficult, as I generally find it difficult, to understand the attitude of Senator Sweetman. One would imagine that by this time Senator Sweetman would have given up the idea which he obviously had in mind up to one or two years ago, that was, that by some fantastic turn of the wheel of fortune he would some day find himself in the place now occupied by Mr. Paddy Smith, Minister for Agriculture. God help Ireland if that day ever comes.

Senator Sweetman, in his opening remarks, admitted that the Minister, in introducing the Bill, was carrying out the recommendations made by the Committee on Post-War Agricultural Policy. I could well imagine, and I am sure that most people here could imagine, Senator Sweetman, in his capacity as the protector of the farming community from Paddy Smith, Jim Ryan or any other possible Fianna Fáil Minister, protesting here or at the crossroads that the Minister for Agriculture had neglected to act on the advice given to him by that committee. However, he tries to make the best case he can, but if he thinks he has made a case against this Bill, or has made the successful attack he hoped to make on the Minister for Agriculture, all I can say to him is that he can keep the change.

With regard to the licensing provision, he set out his objections and said he cannot understand why the Minister could not prevent the spread of disease without bringing in this matter of licensing. I should like to ask him why he has not made a suggestion as to how the Minister could prevent the spread of disease otherwise than by the scheme set out in the Bill. It is an old saying that the best hurlers are always on the ditch, but it would be a good job for Senator Sweetman and for the remnants of the Party he represents, if, instead of indulging in destructive criticism, they would put forward a little constructive criticism and would do a little thinking before rushing into this or the other House to criticise the men who are, and have been, doing constructive work for the country.

It is, of course, quite normal, and quite in keeping with the practice of the Senator to suggest, as an alternative to the method proposed in the Bill for dealing with matters of this kind, that provision should be made for people referring their cases to the courts. I do not want to suggest that Senator Sweetman had any personal interest in the matter. Not for a moment would he think that, in the dim and distant future, if he did not have direct control of the Department of Agriculture, which obviously he has given up all hope of having, he might at least be able to appear in court and to have another go at the Minister for Agriculture or the people who stand behind him. If I know the farming community of this country—and I yield to no man, Senator Sweetman, Senator Sir John Keane, or anybody else, in my knowledge of rural conditions, or the inhabitants of rural Ireland—I do not think they are quite so ready to rush into the courts as Senator Sweetman would suggest and that does not apply alone to the people of rural Ireland. People have rushed into the courts, from time to time, and I think that if many of them were asked what they thought about it, they would say: "We did not mean to go to the courts, but circumstances arose in which we could not avoid doing so." I think that many of the wise people, if there are any wise people amongst the people I have in mind, will not be quite so anxious to rush into the courts again for a while.

It is ridiculous that on this Bill, which should not be a controversial matter, there should be such unfair criticism. The poultry industry has developed and is at present on a par with many of the other very important items in our agricultural economy. This Bill, in my opinion, will go a long way towards ensuring that an improvement will be brought about in that industry, that various diseases will be eliminated and that poultry generally will be put in a position in which there cannot be any just criticism. It is quite easy to understand why certain people such as Senator Sweetman make attacks. It is quite easy to understand the same people being behind the policy of the Sunday Independent in producing the imaginary mothers in England, the imaginary Irish mothers over in England who are to march in thousands over to Dublin to tell the Minister for Agriculture here that he must regulate the policy of the British Government. That is what it amounts to.

I said when I stood up that I did not intend to say very much. I welcome this Bill and I feel that every reasonable member of the House will join with me in congratulating the Minister for Agriculture on the Bill before the House.

Mr. Seán O'Donovan

I would like to begin on the note on which Senator Quirke has finished. I heartily congratulate the Minister on the introduction of this Bill. It is of vital importance to the agricultural community and to the nation as a whole that the poultry industry should be developed to a far greater extent than it is at present. It is one of the principal adjuncts of our agricultural policy and I feel that the Bill is absolutely necessary in view of the fact that one particular disease is transmitted through the egg to the chicken and that day-old chickens if not produced at these hatcheries from hens which are free from the disease will be in grave danger of dying within a week or a fortnight of going to the purchaser. It is of vital importance to our system that this and other diseases should be controlled. The question of the system of control has been raised by Senator Sir John Keane and Senator Sweetman. In any community which elects responsible Ministers and Departments to look after their affairs, surely it is the Minister for Agriculture and his officials who must supervise and see that conditions are complied with and that these hatcheries are maintained in a satisfactory manner. This can be done through the local authority as it can be done through the central authority. The Minister can avail of the services of the local poultry instructresses and I appeal to the Minister to avail of their services to the fullest extent and to have additional poultry instructresses to help in the general development of the industry and in the supervision of these hatcheries. I am very emphatic that you must have local contact by people who are known to the farmers and the wives of the farmers in each district and that these poultry instructresses should be on the spot in so far as they can be on the spot because there is not sufficient of them at the moment. I believe that it is through the efforts of the local poultry instructresses that the Bill will be a success rather than by the supervision of any inspectors coming from headquarters.

I am with Sir John Keane possibly to the extent that I believe that the implementation of this Bill will be best effected through a greater number of local poultry instructresses in the country. I think it is very important to the nation that the provisions of this Bill should be implemented as quickly as possible. The greater number of eggs we export the greater the price we get. It is a magnificent opportunity and should be availed of with all possible speed. Now, Sir John Keane and Senator Sweetman say that everything should go through the courts. That is all right but it involves considerable delay. I want to point out that under the Milk and Dairies Act there is a licensing system for designated milks and these licences are issued by the State. There is registration by the local authority and there is a compulsory clause providing that if there are three convictions the registration must be cancelled. I mention this in order to point out that there is not much difference in implementing this Bill through the local authority which is the county committee for agriculture or the central authority which is the Department of Agriculture. The Department of Agriculture must be the guiding authority. There must be a head authority over the local authorities. That is the system of government in the State. I cannot see the force of Senator Sir John Keane's using my name when calling this system totalitarianism. I say it is not totalitarianism, when the people of this country elect a Government and when subsequently their representatives select Ministers to take charge of the different Departments of State, to say that the officials operating under these Departments throughout the country must be subservient to the Departments. It is not fair to call it totalitarianism.

It is merely confusing the issue in the minds of people, especially people outside the country, so that they can use the words that have been used— that we are "the last outpost of totalitarianism in Europe". The repeated use of this in this ultra-democratic State is wrong and every time Sir John Keane uses it he will bring me to my feet to deny it. There are several clauses in this Bill which indicate that the Minister does not have the final exercise of his own free-will in connection with a number of matters. His officers have to take cases to the court. Section 9, sub-section (3) provides that where a poultry hatchery licence-holder does not comply with the conditions attaching to the licence he shall be guilty of an offence and on summary conviction be liable to a fine not exceeding £10. In Section 10 it is definitely stated that the Minister in his absolute discretion can revoke a poultry hatchery licence. I have no hesitation in saying that in certain circumstances a person convicted of a breach of the regulations applicable to his licence should have it withdrawn. The Minister will then naturally withdraw the licence from such a person, but I hope that it is on very rare occasions that such action will have to be taken. There are several other clauses providing for officials going into court. Section 20 sets out four headings under any of which a person found guilty of such and such an offence shall be liable to a fine not exceeding £10.

Some people, especially lawyers, seem to have great regard for the right to take everything to court and the right to appear before a justice and state a case. There is adequate provision for that in this Bill and there is also the provision that the Minister has the right to withdraw a licence held under the Bill. No purpose would be served by taking a man to court week after week, month after month, year after year, if somebody had not the authority to say: "Look here; you have offended long enough. The best thing is for you to get out of this business. I will have to withdraw your licence". It is only commonsense that that provision should be in the Bill and nobody could call it totalitarianism. I hope as a result of this Bill to see the poultry industry developed to an extraordinary degree. There is every opportunity for that. During the emergency, the only difficulty was in respect of proper feeding stuffs. Now the poultry industry allows of quicker development than most other branches of our agriculture. I wish the Bill every success in that respect.

Blood-testing is a system whereby the carrier of disease will be detected. An immense amount of blood-testing must be carried out through the official hatcheries and through the approved egg supply farms. The Minister should take a big view of this and should realise that a far greater number of centres for the examination of blood should be established. The way to do that, in my opinion, is through the county committees of agriculture. I understand that at present the blood is sent to the veterinary college in Dublin for test.

I am with Senator Sir John Keane to this extent that I believe it is impossible to send all the blood specimens collected from Cork to Donegal to the veterinary college in Dublin. There will have to be a greater number of centres throughout the country so that the work may be expedited. My idea is that through the county committees of agriculture the local stations can do this work much more quickly and there will not be a cluttering up of work in one institution in Dublin.

I mention that because my picture of the development of agriculture generally is that there will be greater help from local poultry instructresses, local agricultural instructors and local veterinary inspectors. I have said, and I repeat, that we must have a greater number of these. More money must be spent, and it will be usefully spent, in providing a greater number of poultry instructresses, agricultural advisers and veterinary inspectors to help the farming community in the various branches of their industry. The agricultural instructor at present cannot possibly contact more than a fraction of the people who would like to see him and whom he would like to see. The poultry instructress cannot do it. The veterinary inspector cannot do it. There are not enough of them. These matters have been referred to in the Post-War Planning Committee's Report and Recommendations and I appeal to the Minister to accept the point of view that this is one of the Bills that supplies machinery by which the poultry industry can be developed to an enormous extent. The agricultural community are awaiting that development.

I hope the Minister will take the points of view I have put to him seriously and for other branches of agriculture will take the steps he is taking in this Bill. As one individual, I heartily commend them to the House.

Mr. Smith

I do not think there is very much I require to say in reply to the remarks that have been made on both sides. The contribution of Senator Sir John Keane reminded me of classes of people for whom I have always had a great deal of sympathy. I will mention one class—those who do missionary work, preachers of all kinds —inasmuch as they are called upon to repeat themselves and to make the same sort of case so often. I have in mind a missioner whom I once knew, who belonged to my own Church. He was giving a mission in a particular parish and, after he had completed the mission in the first Church, he made inquiries as to the distance it was to the next Church, fearing that the original congregation would follow him to the second place and knowing he would have the same sort of story to tell.

I understood his difficulty just as I understand the difficulty of Senator Sir John Keane and others like him who stand up in this House time after time and, searching around for something original to say and not finding it, fall back on: "The Minister is seeking power here to make regulations. The Minister is seeking dictatorial and totalitarian powers". Since I came here I have wondered if these remarks are directed at me. Perhaps it is the guilty conscience that I have that makes me think so.

Sir John Keane

May I explain? If you go back to the speech I made 20 years ago you will find I said exactly the same thing about some of Paddy Hogan's measures, and I can now show how they proved themselves.

Mr. Smith

The Senator has disappointed me. I was going to make what I thought was a grand point and he has knocked the bottom out of it. Anyhow, I have a notion, from my contacts with members of the Senator's Party, if I am entitled to put it that way or—if I am not so entitled—with people in the other House who think along the same lines as the Senator, that they are prone to accuse me personally of being dictatorial. The Senator's remarks on the last occasion on which I was here conveyed to me that, while he may have had that feeling 20 years ago, he holds it rather more firmly now. I would not object in the least if that were the case because, what is the position regarding a Minister who has a very responsible task to do? This office of mine is certainly a full-time job. Sometimes I am accused of being dictatorial. Sometimes I am accused of being hard to move. Sometimes I am accused of being totalitarian. The peculiar feature of it is that those who accuse me of being all these things are the very people who would accuse me of being in the hands of my officials if I did not make myself conversant with the work of my Department. It is not my job to express an opinion as to when a man is a good Minister or what the qualifications are, but I take it that one of the most important qualifications is that he should try to know all that is going on in his Department and that, while he should be prepared to listen to his officials and his advisers and people interested in the particular business outside, he should have a mind of his own and act upon it, having heard all sides of the question. That might be, to Senator Sir John Keane and some others, indicative of a totalitarian or a dictatorial tendency. If it is, then I am very glad to possess it up to the hilt.

Again we have had the expression: "This is the thin end of the wedge". Well, it must be a very long wedge, as it is the thin end for a very long time. While I have sympathy with those who have to apply themselves to show some semblance of opposition or criticism on a measure of this kind, and I know the limitations that are imposed upon them, I would like to think that the Senator and his friends would find some other way to put it than the way in which it has been put this evening.

I am not taking seriously the suggestion that there should be an appeal to the courts, having regard to the fact that the holder of a licence has the right to make representations to me if the licence has been taken away. What interest should I have other than the public good in determining the facts as placed before me? I am an ordinary lay person, but surely I am as capable as anybody else to determine when the facts are such as to warrant the withdrawal of a licence and surely there is no person more entitled to make that final decision than the person occupying the post of Minister for Agriculture? My sense of justice surely is as keen as that of any other man and probably I am not more subject to error than any other person, whether legal or otherwise.

Senator O'Donovan mentioned that he would be glad to see more instructors and inspectors employed, to bring our people to a fuller understanding of many things they may not understand now. In my contacts with county committees, I have tried to bring that point home. Unfortunately, I am afraid that in this country there is a tendency—though it is not as firmly rooted as some would have us believe—not to seek the advice of those who have technical knowledge. This afternoon it was my privilege to present a cup to a woman from a neighbouring county whose poultry had won an egg-laying competition for the second time. Her husband made the speech for her and he spoke very highly of the officials who, as he put it, had enabled them to secure the success they had achieved. He lauded the officials of the county committee and of my Department to the skies.

I do not believe in flooding the country with officials unless there is a public demand for them. I wish we could induce our farmers and their wives who are interested in the industry with which we are now dealing and the other branches of agriculture, to seek the advice of those people, in the full knowledge that they are in no way obliged to act on the advice. If, after getting that advice, they find it is practical and advisable to follow, their neighbours will do likewise; and if, as a result of the spread of that feeling, there should be need for further assistance in that direction, it could be provided.

I am very glad to get this measure now. As I said in my opening remarks, we have not completed the discussion with the British Government on this particular industry. A scheme has been devised to expand production in poultry and eggs and this Bill will, when it becomes an Act, give us the foundation on which to base the scheme which is contemplated. It will be some years, of course, before we can see the full effect of these provisions. The Senators who try to understand what is aimed at in this measure should take in alongside that the scheme which we have in mind, to which I have already referred, as well as my own intentions towards helping the poultry-keepers of the country to provide themselves with suitable accommodation for their poultry stocks. If we had these three —the Bill, the agreement with the British, and the proposals which I intend shortly to put before the Government—I think we would be on the road to placing this industry in a good position to advance, provided, of course— and this is very important—the food supply position improves. I do not think it is possible to expand to the extent we would like unless that comes about; but the shortage will not last for ever and we are now making the plans for the expansion we hope will come in a short time when the food supply position changes.

Question put and agreed to.

Seanad Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 3 Dec 1947