I move amendment No. 4:—
Before Section 5 to insert a new section as follows:—
() In the course of its operations the board shall have regard to the following major considerations:—
(a) the desirability of developing on an appropriate economic foundation a social and economic organisation in which Gaelic culture and civilisation may survive, flourish and expand;
(b) the desirability of integrating industrial development with a general economic structure in which agriculture, industry, afforestation, fishing, tourism, turf production and the arts and crafts play their respective parts;
(c) the desirability of co-ordinating the activities of the board with those of Bord na Móna, the Irish Sugar Company, the Forestry Department, the Electricity Supply Board, the Arterial Drainage Board and all central and local Government agencies which are in any way concerned with ameliorating conditions in the undeveloped areas.
I hope the Minister will be disposed to view this amendment sympathetically. I can assure him that it is by no means designed to spoil the general structure of the Bill. I agree that to a certain extent we must solve our economic problems one by one; but at the same time we should have in view the general pattern of national economic policy while contemplating also the kind of civilisation or social order which we hope will emerge from the various steps we take.
My own idea of a good social order is that advocated by the late Sir Horace Plunkett and the late George Russell, who saw in a co-operative commonwealth a modern civilisation reproducing all that is best in the old Gaelic social order. I suggest that the persons charged with the administrative duty of implementing this Bill should have clearly at the back of their minds an idea of the kind of civilisation we hope will result from their efforts even though they themselves play only a small part in the creation of that structure. I am trying to supply the administrative machine with headlights and steering gear, knowing that the dynamics that make it go must come from some other source. The duty of the board is to promote industrial development in the congested areas, but, I think, rightly interpreted, that duty includes also the duty to do all in their power to create the conditions in which new industries may grow, take root and develop and maintain a permanent and vigorous vitality. If they are to fulfil that function, they will have to have the closest co-operation with all the other Government and local agencies that are playing a part in the local life and the most intimate knowledge of the local conditions and the human material with which they are concerned.
If you ask why is the economic life of the congested areas at such a low level under present conditions I suppose one might answer: "Because there is no industrial production and very little agricultural production." If you go further and ask why is there no local industrial production one important part of the answer would be: "Because there is no surplus purchasing power available on the part of the local agriculturists to buy the products of local industries if any such industries existed." If you ask why is local agriculture at such a low level that there is little surplus purchasing power, the answer is that there is no local market in that part of the world of non-agriculturists to buy surplus products of agriculture and so agriculture has a low subsistence level and the agriculturists have no purchasing power. In that environment it is extremely difficult for industrial development to take place by natural economic incentives.
That is the kind of situation which we will have to try to improve. It is a vicious circle at present and we have, therefore, to do what we can to develop industry and at the same time to develop agriculture. You cannot permanently develop the one without, at the same time, developing the other. Development of agriculture in the congested areas depends on the development of industries in these areas. The development of industry depends on the development of agriculture in those areas. In that respect the congested areas are quite different from the rest of the country. In the rest of the country you could have a one-sided national policy of concentrating on the development of agriculture and the resulting improvement in the purchasing power of farmers would indirectly and ultimately produce the natural development of the industrial life in the rest of the country. The reason for that is that you have an export market for what we can produce in the rest of the country. In the congested areas they are cut off by natural obstacles from ready and cheap access to the rest of the world, even to their own country, much more so to the external export market. They have to be looked at as a more or less isolated economic area and for that reason it is necessary that there should be a conjoint attempt at the development of both agriculture and industry side by side, step by step and hand in hand.
If there is to be that co-ordination of effort it is essential that the persons charged with the administration of this Bill should have the maximum local knowledge. If they are to have that they must have their headquarters in some suitable centre in each of the areas which they are trying to develop. I hope the fact that there are three members of this board is an indication that it is proposed that the headquarters of one of them should be, say, in Castlebar or Westport, that another should have his personal headquarters in Killarney and a third should be situated in Dungloe or Letterkenny, each one to have primary responsibility for policy in his particular part of the congested areas. I am quite certain if these three wise men are to be buried in a back room of a Dublin Government office and only accessible to the kind of pressure that is so common in Dublin and deprived of the local knowledge they can only obtain by living in the neighbourhood of the congested areas, they will achieve nothing of any permanent value.
May I give some examples of the kind of co-ordination of effort I have in mind? It would be highly desirable that the farmers in County Galway should keep more pigs but if they are to do so they are faced with the fact that at present there is no pig factory nearer to them than Castlebar, which is a very good pig factory indeed but it happens to be 47 or 50 miles or more away from many parts of County Galway. Transport to that distant factory would remove a good deal of the profit of pig rearing. It is desirable that a pig processing factory should be established in Clifden, shall we say, but if this is to be established successfully the farmers in that whole neighbourhood must be induced to keep more pigs. That is a job, in the first instance, for the local instructors of the Department of Agriculture but, of course, ultimately for the farmers themselves.
Now I am told that the local instructors of the Department of Agriculture do not do any teaching of agriculture at all in the the whole of that Gaeltacht area of Galway, but confine their activities to taking orders for day-old chicks when they get them, and handing out seed potatoes at less than their economic price. If that is so the sooner that state of affairs comes to an end the better and the sooner the Department's officials start teaching the farmers how they should go about rearing more pigs and, generally speaking, adding to their agricultural production, the better. For although we think of the land of Connaught as being pretty poor it is not so poor as all that. You can grow quite big crops of potatoes on that soil, provided it is properly drained. I have heard of ten or 12 tons of potatoes per statute acre being grown on quite ordinary land in County Galway; and you can grow quite good crops of oats on the same land provided it is properly drained. I have heard of a yield of 30 cwt. of oats to the acre being got on quite ordinary land. The trouble is that the people have been so pauperised and so neglected and so little disposed to make the most of their available resources that they have not responded to agricultural education because they have not been given any to respond to. One of the functions of this board should be to work with all the other Governments agencies, especially the Department of Agriculture in order to improve the economic life of the people in the Gaeltacht.
Some time ago, the Department of Agriculture did, I think, encourage the production of strawberries in County Mayo. Mayo is practically the only part of the British Isles in which strawberries are free from the virus disease and will grow and flourish. Some years ago, when strawberry plants were exhausted in Great Britain, they had to renew their stock of plants from plants which emanated originally from County Mayo, though, probably, they did not bear that trade name after they came to be sold in Great Britain. The strawberry-growing industry of these isles depends on the fact that the virus disease which is in strawberries does not exist in Mayo or, probably, in Galway. The particular fly which brings that disease cannot survive in the climate down there, and, having recently travelled down to that part of the country two days after Christmas, I can well understand that. It is all to the good that the horticultural instructors of County Mayo have encouraged the growing of strawberries for sale to other parts of the world. Whether they are grown for sale as plants, for fruit for dessert or for making jam, I see no reason why they should not be grown more widely in Mayo, Galway and elsewhere. In that connection, I would suggest the desirability for a jam factory, which should be owned by the Strawberry Growers' Co-operative Society. In any event, such a factory should be brought into existence. This is the sort of thing which the proposed board should encourage. It would represent a valuable example of the association between the work of the Department of Agriculture and the work of the new board.
A scheme for the establishment of glass houses for the growing of tomatoes had reached a certain stage of development before the last Government came into power and it was then treated with undeserved contempt by the late Minister for Agriculture. I am not aware of the extent to which that scheme has succeeded, but I do know that there is plenty of turf in Connemara and that a cheap source of peat is a desirable economic factor in the production of tomatoes. I feel that the climatic conditions are such that tomato growing could be freely encouraged in many parts of that area. There are such things as chutney factories for using up surplus tomatoes. In this way the board could coordinate the activities of the various agencies that are trying to improve the lot of the people in the undeveloped areas. My purpose in this amendment is to draw attention to the desirability of such and also co-ordination—co-ordination with local Government agencies especially the county councils.
Everyone is aware that limestone is notoriously deficient in Connemara. That is generally true but there are places here and there in Connemara where limestone does crop up. It has been brought to my notice that a certain limestone quarry is being worked by the county council, not to provide lime for spreading on land which is badly in need of it, but to provide lime for road surfacing where it is absolutely useless. Everybody knows that limestone is not a good road surfacing material. These quarriers, apparently, do not know any better or for one reason or another they use lime on the roads instead of spreading it on the land. Co-ordination between various Government agencies working in that area would discourage people from using limestone in that uneconomic way. Farmers should be encouraged to draw lime to their land from a quarry which happens to be situated in an area which needs lime.
I have here with me a rather illegible report on local economic conditions from a friend of mine who spent much of his administrative life in the Far East and who has now settled down permanently in Connemara. He knows and loves that area and he has visited it from his childhood. He says, apropos of oats, poultry and eggs:—
"There is no buying organisation in Clifden and the local market is small and unreliable. This should be set up. I have noticed eggs priced in the Dublin shops at 3/6 when they were only 1/6 in Clifden, and fowls costing 15/- in Dublin would be 7/6 in Clifden. Nobody is going to increase poultry stocks beyond home hotel needs under such conditions."
These facts seem to me to be the most important economic factor in the situation and the one which this board should aim at altering for the better as soon as it possibly can.